Karjakin Going to Work as a Spassky Impersonator?

It isn't really the focus of this story, which notes a chess gathering that included 95-year-old Yuri Averbakh, 80-year-old Boris Spassky, 27-year-old Sergey Karjakin, and 4-year-old Misha Osipov, but do take a look at Karjakin's new hair style. Perhaps Karjakin is hoping that he, like Spassky, will face his conquerer in a second match and come out ahead this time?

Happy Birthday, Boris Spassky

He is 80 today; or rather, turned 80 yesterday - Monday - for most of you reading this at the time of posting. He is the oldest currently living world champion, with Anatoly Karpov a distant second at the age of 65. (Which seems unbelievable to me, having followed him since he was in his 20s. The years fly by.)

A strange interview with Spassky can be read here (as I've noted before, just about every recent interview with Spassky is a strange one); it's in Russian, but it's relatively intelligible by means of Google Translate.

A Post-Match Interview...with Spassky

That's Boris Spassky about his own match in 1972, with Bobby Fischer. It's not apropos of anything having to do with the just-finished Carlsen-Karjakin match, but could be of intrinsic interest to chess fans in general. It's just a two-minute clip, here. (HT: Ross Hytnen)

This Week's World Chess Column: A Look Back at the Second Piatigorsky Cup in 1966

The Second Piatigorsky Cup took place 50 years ago this month, and was at the time the strongest tournament on U.S. soil since New York 1924. World Champion Tigran Petrosian participated, as did his recently vanquished challenger (and later conquerer) Boris Spassky, and Bobby Fischer too. I take a look back at the event, complete with lots of annotated games, here.

Looking Back at Fischer-Spassky 1972, From Both Perspectives

From Brian Karen: First, a Chicago Tribune article on Bobby Fischer as he trained (on the heavy bag) in the Catskills; next, a very long look back by Nikolai Krogius (in translation) as he attempted without much success to get Boris Spassky to train diligently for the match. The latter in particular is highly recommended, even to those who have read plenty on the '72 match already.

Spassky Interview

It can be hard to know what to make of Boris Spassky's interviews; that is, how seriously they should be taken. In this latest interview, he says that he is writing about his career, a "huge analytical project." If so, great, but Spassky has been saying this for at least 20 years. Cum grano salis.

On another matter, there is his very serious accusation against Iivo Nei. If all he has to go on is the fact that Nei co-authored a book with American GM Robert Byrne on Spassky's 1972 World Championship match with Bobby Fischer, then Spassky's accusation may be slanderous. The evidence of the games doesn't really support Spassky, as he won the theoretical disputes in Fischer's favorite opening lines: the 6.Bc4 Najdorf (game 4, which Spassky should have won) and the Poisoned Pawn Najdorf (at least in game 11). In game 6 Fischer went blindly into a line that Spassky's second Efim Geller had refuted, but Spassky forgot or rejected it at the board and went on to lose a nice game.

Spassky's comments about Korchnoi were also slightly confusing. Their mutual enmity at the time of their 1977 Candidates' match was well-known, but I was under the impression that they had long since buried the hatchet, certainly by 1999 when they played a friendly active match in St. Petersburg. Apparently not.

At any rate, it is an interesting interview.

The Greatest Game Ever Played?

That's the title of my current column on the World Chess website, in which I annotate game 6 of the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match and consider criteria for a game's greatness.

An Interview with Boris Spassky

The original is here, while large excerpts have been translated into English on the Chess24 website. As usual, I'd recommend that non-Russian readers start with the translation and then go to the original, making what they can of the Google Translate rendering.

"Anand-Carlsen Bigger Than Spassky-Fischer"?

This claim, which is also the headline of this article (HT: Jaideep Unudurti), initially struck me as utter poppycock. The 1972 match between world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union and Bobby Fischer of the U.S.A. involved the world's two super-powers, nations that were not only significant in their own right but as the representatives of two very different and radically opposed political systems. India is an up-and-coming (and extremely populous) nation and Norway is a beautiful and prosperous country, but neither plays the sort of role that the USSR or the USA did.

What about the players? Viswanathan Anand strikes me as a more impressive version of Boris Spassky. Both are gentleman and fantastic players in their own right, both were world junior champions and both took a bit longer to become champion than their immense talent and great early results led people to expect. Anand's results and longevity are greater than Spassky's, though on the other hand Spassky's dominance from 1965 to 1970 may represent a longer stretch at the top than Anand's.*

As for Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen, both were dominant players. The distance between Fischer and world #2 Spassky was colossal - 125 points! Carlsen is "only" 69 points higher-rated than world #2 Levon Aronian and 95 points higher than Anand. ("Ouch!" for the champion in any case.) On the other hand, Carlsen has achieved this match and his dominance at an earlier age than Fischer did. Still, Fischer was a far more charismatic and enigmatic figure than Carlsen. Carlsen comes across as a normal, well-adjusted individual, and I suspect that what non-chessplaying people remember most about Carlsen after seeing some program about him is that he is called the "Mozart of chess". (That label was bestowed on him in 2004 by Lubosh Kavalek, and is to me even more cringeworthy** than Hans Kmoch's calling Fischer's 1956 win over Donald Byrne the "Game of the Century".) Further, while Carlsen has received strong coaching every step of the way, Fischer was largely (not entirely) a self-made player. Both are fantastic players with staggering amounts of talent and drive, who made the most of their gifts, but in terms of their "notoriety quotients" Carlsen barely registers as a blip compared to Fischer. (That's not necessarily a bad thing!)

So, as I said, I was inclined to dismiss the organizer's remark as near-nonsense, as a bit of self-serving and self-congratulatory propaganda, and wasn't going to post. But I recognize that my thoughts about this are very likely influenced to some degree by the fact that I live in (what was) Fischer's country, the United States of America. So I ask my European and South Asian friends and readers, especially those who go back to the Fischer era or at least know those who lived through it, to tell me how things seem in your neck of the woods. Could it really be that the upcoming Anand-Carlsen match is making a bigger splash than Spassky-Fischer in 1972 - particularly in the broader culture?

* (Yes, I'm aware that Spassky was world champion from 1969-1972.)

** Kavalek came up with that moniker to meet a deadline, Carlsen himself apparently didn't and maybe still doesn't care for it very much, and the game that inspired Kavalek (Carlsen-Ernst, Wijk aan Zee 2004) was already worked out by Carlsen beforehand, if I remember correctly.

The Latest on Spassky, According to Spassky

Lots of non-accusation accusations here, all to be taken cum grano salis. (HT: Chess Today)