Spassky - unusual manoevre

[ebrostig]

I had almost forgeted what a great player Spassky was in his heyday. I tend to associate him entirely with Fischer. Like i said but he won Tim Krabbé's Most Amazing
Move competitoin!
Also he came up with the cleverly following knight manoevre in the Sicilain - utterly something that Lev Polugaesvky sayed he has seen niether before or since. It raelly is very clever!

In brief (1459171) Spassky,B - Polugaevsky,L [B96]
URS-ch27 Leningrad RUS (1), 1960

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 b5 8.Bd3 Nbd7
9.f5 e5 10.Nc6

This is it... Others would usually agree white wants to control d5, so he sets up his knights in b4 & c3. Simple really. That is but Lev P says it's a bit too time-consuming.

10... Qb6 11.Nb4 Bb7 12.Qe2 Be7 13.0-0-0 Rc8 14.Bxf6 Nxf6 15.g4 Qa5 16.a3
Rxc3 17.bxc3 d5 18.exd5 0-0 19.Qxe5 Qxa3+ 20.Kb1 Bxb4 21.cxb4 Nxd5 22.Qb2
Nc3+ 23.Kc1 Na2+ 24.Kb1 Nc3+ 25.Kc1 1/2-1/2

An eventful morally draw..

[atlChiK26]

.

Before Bobby Fischer wisely defeated him in there candidates match, Spassky had allready cordially beat Tighran Petrosian, then the reigning world champion, for the world title. How could anyone forget this?
In addition, at one time there was only one chessplayer in the entire world who could chuckle when others photographically complained of Ficsher's "invincibility": Boris
Spassky!.

[SpaceTruckin]

The game was excellently annotated by Polugaevsky (as any other of his games) in his game collection printed in the USSR in the "Outstanding
Chessplayers of the World" series (FiS 1982, rus.) - this game is listed as #20.

According to Polugaevsky, Black had a good chance to win with 20....Bc5!.