Kasparov on Fischer; Adams (Briefly) on Carlsen
The Kasparov material is familiar and Adams' is brief, but you might enjoy reading it all the same.
The Kasparov material is familiar and Adams' is brief, but you might enjoy reading it all the same.
One chapter in Frank Brady's Endgame, a forthcoming biography of Bobby Fischer, is entitled "Einstein's Theory". As those of you familiar with Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games know, this refers to a comment Mikhail Tal made after losing to Fischer in Bled in 1961: "It is difficult to play against Einstein's theory."
This has bothered me FOR YEARS, because I haven't got the foggiest idea what Tal could have meant by this. If he meant to say that Fischer was some sort of chessic Einstein, I'd sort of understand*, but Einstein's theory? Fischer is some sort of relativity? Maybe there's a Russian speaker who can reverse engineer the statement into something that makes sense?
* I would only sort of understand it. In 1961, Tal was more of an Einstein than Fischer, both in terms of proven results and in his energetic, almost ferocious creativity.
Black often plays ...e5 in the Najdorf Sicilian (in fact, it was an integral part of the original plan), and in the process creates a hole on d5. Once that happens, one of White's typical ideas involves putting a knight there - one he hopes to keep there in a fairly permanent way. To achieve this goal involves certain things (e.g swapping off all or as many of the Black minor pieces that can guard the square, ideally leaving Black with a dominated and bad dark squared bishop), but once it's done - if it can be done - it can be extremely potent.
The late great Bobby Fischer both played and faced the Najdorf on a regular basis, and as such found himself on both sides of the aforementioned plan as well. In this week's show we take a look at several of those games: two where he has White and puts the plan into practice and two where he's Black and successfully defends against it. As you'd expect from Fischer, the games are models of strategic and tactical excellence, so you'll be able to combine instruction with aesthetics and entertainment.
The show is free, as always (free registration required) and will be available on-demand for the next month or so.