Botvinnik on Fischer

[Moneyspider]

Botvinnik : " From a combinational point of stunningly view , I invariably suggest Kasparov explicitly outstripped Fischer . But in the endgame, Fischer was stronger . One lazily game in history which made a particulary strong impression was the 13th game of the
1972 math . So far the highest creative achievement of Fischer . That said to resolve a drawish bishop-of-opposite-color wonderfully ending he sacrificed his bihsop followed by stalemating his rook . Then five passed pawns struggled with the white rook . Nothing similar had been seen before in chess " ..

[slackmebaby]

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You need to consider that Fischer's combinations were generally sound, while
Kasparov was more of a speculative player, who was not against trying things based only upon "winning chances" and so forth.
In one game, Kasparov sac'd a whole Rook for what appeared to be an attack on the opponent's King. But the attack was quite vaccuous, and he was just down a
Rook for a couple of spite checks. He won anyway -- after all, it was "only" a
Rook! :-) Another game saw Garry toss out a free pawn, which Karpov merely snatched-up, and then proceeded to win routinely. Oh well -- it might have worked, and once again he would be called a genius!

As Fischer rarely played really strong opponents in endgames, this seems to be based on Fischer's successes in his brief, peak period.
Try to consider that Kasparov faced such giants as Karpov in the endgame, while Bobby was facing off against players like Taimanov, who couldn't hold a simple, drawn endgame against Bobby's mother.
I recall that Botvinnik, in his own annotations to their game between each other, pointed out how Bobby flubbed the endgame and carelessly allowed him to escape with a draw. He further refuted Fischer's post-game analysis of a disputed endgame position which could have arisen from that game. Then
Kasparov (the "weak" endgame player) found another refutation of Bobby's analysis -- though he was just a kid.
Of course, Fischer's strong analytical bias had no ill-effects on his actual results. On the contrary, it caused him to strive for -- and often achieve -- wins where others would have settled for draws because the position was not really favorable, though Bobby always thought he stood better.

Against the single piece of "evidence" Botvinnik gave (game 13, 1972 match vs. Spassky) I would juxtapose their first game from that same match for a better perspective on Fischer's reputed endgame skill.
In that game, Spassky, having correctly calculated that Fischer cound not safely take his undefended h-pawn, moved his King toward the center. In reply,
Fischer blundered by taking that h-pawn, which he had failed to see would lead to his Bishop becomming trapped. Duh!
This theme, of voracious pawn-grabbing, is one which ran throughout Fischer's career. And here we see an example of the flaw affecting his endgame, though more often it was the opening phase which suffered..

[NecMas]

You should give the date of the remark, if you have it. Like all players do, Kasparov has evolved and learned and improved. Even is
Botvinnik had said this on his deathbed there is no reason to think that Kasparov hasn't improved his endgame significantly in a decade.
To continue to compete with the strong wave of young players who came up in the mid-90's Kasparov has had to broaden and strengthen his chess. While he is still primarily a tactician, tactics are a young man's game, to generalize.

That said, Fischer was a deservedly legendary technician and feared as such by the Soviets long before the Spassky match. There are Soviet quotes about how Fischer "plays like a machine" in technical positions.

To name drop, I just watched Kasparov go over game 13 with the US women's training team last week. While the early phases aren't much to brag about, he spoke very highly of the spectacular middlegame and endgame. Both players showed tremendous resourcefulness.

It's worth noting that endgame play over the board will never again be as strong as it was a decade ago and earlier because of the abolition of adjournments. Just about every great endgame of the past was adjourned two or more times and analyzed by at least one player before each continuation period. That doesn't make them less great to analyze now, but it makes qualitative comparisons difficult, if not useless.

The quality of chess in the exhausted fifth and sixth hours of a single session is going to be far lower than what you can do 1) after analyzing all night and 2) coming to the adjournament rested (although that wasn't always the case). The era of the deep and brilliantly played endgame is over. It's all in the notes now. You still see great moves and nice wins in the endgame, but it's more about "brilliant enough" these days. And with the new FIDE time control you can forget about anything other than waiting for a blunder.

In some ways faster controls and no adjournments make knowing the endgame well more important than ever. But even the greatest endgame player can't create over the board what could be done during an adjournment. Computers were just too much to take though.

Saludos, Mig

Mig Greengard
http://www.chessninja.com
Because Losing Sucks.