7 ms·

The Bobby Fischer Defense, by Garry Kasparov

gjm11 15y ago
In case anyone's wondering about the title (the article is about Fischer, but not about anyone defending him from anything, nor about any chess opening that bears his name, nor about how he defended in a difficult chess position), I'm pretty sure it's an allusion to Nabokov's novel "Luzhin's Defense" (the English translation is simply titled "The Defense"), about a gifted chess player who gradually falls into insanity as the novel progresses. (It doesn't entirely fit Fischer, who seems to have done most of his going-mad after retiring from his chess career rather than during it, but never mind.)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - barrkel 15y ago
    It might not be - it might be ghost-written or translated, and certainly has been edited etc. - but it is presented and bylined as though written by Kasparov. Do you have specific other information?
    - jonnathanson 15y ago
      Kasparov is an accomplished and prolific analyst and writer on a wide variety of subjects, and especially (and obviously) chess. Furthermore, this article matches his general writing style -- at least as I've encountered it over the years, across any number of publications. If he's got a ghostwriter, it's the same ghostwriter every time. More likely, however, it's just him. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He's a sharp guy and a sharp writer.
    - mturmon 15y ago
      Kasparov writes for the New York Review occasionally. People here would be even more interested in: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master-and-the-computer/?pagination=false http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-che... which is his reminisces on his several chess matches with computers, and at the end a couple of remarks on poker versus chess.
  - DanielStraight 15y ago
    The article is more or less a book review, written by Kasparov, about a book written by Frank Brady. That book is a biography of Fischer. The title of the article is The Bobby Fischer Defense. The title of the book is Endgame. It's a little confusing, but all the information is there.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
btilly 15y ago
It is worth noting that the USA has produced two world champion chess players, both abandoned the game and went crazy. (The other was Paul Morphy: see http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Morphygoescrazy.html http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Morphygoescrazy.html for one contemporary report of his insanity.) Actually Kasparov's grasp of reality is somewhat questionable. For instance read http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm where he demonstrates an astonishing lack of understanding of basic history. (For the first major mistake, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution for why his naive projections of population growth are clearly wrong.)
- barrkel 15y ago
  A lack of knowledge of British history is hardly grounds for questioning someone's grasp on reality.
  - btilly 15y ago
    I'm questioning his grasp of reality because he believes that about a thousand years of recorded history didn't happen, and there is some plot among historians to cover this up. In this particular case a lack of knowledge of British history is a lack of knowledge of world history. The British Agricultural Revolution resulted in major increases in food supply, that allowed populations to grow rapidly. What Britain discovered got exported to the rest of Europe, and European colonies. The result was a greatly expanded carrying capacity for the human population, which enabled a world-wide population explosion. Now granted, most people don't know about this. But if you're curious about the history of population growth in Europe, it really is easy to find out what historians have to say about it. And when you do so you should run across this fairly quickly.
    - hugh3 15y ago
      I do agree, that article is slightly nutty. It has the usual air of a very smart guy getting outside his area of expertise -- one simple observation plus one leap to a rather world-shattering conclusion minus a few key pieces of knowledge which anyone in the actual field should know about. It's not quite the same thing as having a tenuous grasp on reality. It's more like listening to Einstein (or Chomsky) on politics -- very good in one field, rather over-confident in another.
petegrif 15y ago
Great article. I am always amazed by how well K writes.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Isofarro 15y ago
There's an interesting piece about the potential Fischer-Karpov match where Kasparov notes: "This includes testimony by Karpov himself, who said Fischer was the favorite and later put his own chances of victory at 40 percent." This is the same Karpov that a few matches earlier ceded that Spassky would win that current candidates cycle, and then Karpov goes on to beat Spassky quite comfortably in the semi-final match. I think this speaks for Karpov's public-facing modesty and pragmatism, rather than an objective examination of playing strengths. But still, a Fischer-Karpov match could have been absolutely epic, perhaps potentially surpassing the previous Spassky-Fischer match.
Jun8 15y ago
I liked this insightful comment: "Then on January 17, 2008, he died in Reykjavík after a long illness for which he had refused treatment. Even this was somehow typical of Fischer, who grew up playing chess against himself since he had no one else to play. He had fought to the end and proven himself to be his most dangerous opponent." It seems like Fischer was playing against himself all his life. That being said, I don't think today's cold, database driven world of chess (e.g. see http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_max http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_...) would have had much use for his individuality, had he stayed the course. He probably would have lost to the new breed of players. Good for him, then, to stay a legend, albeit a disturbing one.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  There was a great New Yorker piece a few months back about the new generation of computer-raised chess players, typified by present-day wunderkind Magnus Carlsen. The piece is concerned primarily with Carlsen and his rise to fame in the chess world -- but, being a New Yorker article, it's also quite discursive and takes a few fun tangents along the way. One of which is a dissection of computer-age chess players and chess-playing computer algorithms. The general consensus among chess grandmasters is that the best algorithms out there are undeniably impossible for a human to defeat -- but yet, they play "ugly" chess. They're using a brute-force style of AI and can beat a human player down through sheer speed of calculation, and/or perfect recall of vast databases of former games. Someone like Kasparov would argue that a computer chess master is no more the intellectual superior of a human master than a calculator is the intellectual superior of a human mathematics PhD. Finally, the article did confirm a suspicion held among some AI theorists and neuroscientists these days, which is that a combined human/AI "team" can defeat any lone human or lone AI. In the case of folks like Carlsen, the thinking is that this new generation will soar to new heights precisely because it has trained with and against computers, thus piecing together a best-of-both-worlds approach.
  - gnosis 15y ago
    "Someone like Kasparov would argue that a computer chess master is no more the intellectual superior of a human master than a calculator is the intellectual superior of a human mathematics PhD." Except that there's a lot more to being good at math than just being good at calculation and memorization; not so in chess (at least not against computers). Computers have proven that they've got what it takes to win the game. And, ultimately, that's all that really matters in chess as it is presently designed. Of course, there are plenty of chess variants (not to mention games like Go) which are a lot harder for computers to play well. It is quite likely that that's where most serious chess players will migrate to over time. In fact, for the last decades of his life, Bobby Fischer himself refused to play anything but Fischer Random Chess (also known as Chess 960), a variant which made it practically impossible to memorize a significant portion of opening theory, since in this variant there is not just a single opening position as in regular chess, but 960 of them.
rrrazdan 15y ago
Here is a link to the famous 'Game of the Century' by Bobby. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008361 http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008361
nicetryguy 15y ago
Kasparov is a surprisingly eloquent writer
- gaius 15y ago
  Why surprising? Because he's Russian?
  - nicetryguy 15y ago
    Pleasantly surprising. I wouldn't naturally associate a smooth pen and lingual beauty with a chess champion
te_platt 15y ago
Addressing the theory that Fischer was afraid to play again after becoming world champion Kasparov writes: "Brady’s dismissal of this theory misses the point: 'What everyone seemed to overlook was that at the board Bobby feared no one.' Yes, once at the board he was fine! Where Fischer had his greatest crisis of confidence was always before getting to the board, before getting on the plane. Fischer’s perfectionism, his absolute belief that he could not fail, did not allow him to put that perfection at risk." That applies to much more than just chess. In fact I found the whole article not just very well written but poignant on many levels.
rohwer 15y ago
As an addendum, the final round of the current world championship candidates matches are starting. See http://kazan2011.fide.com/ http://kazan2011.fide.com/ or This Week In Chess http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/ http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/
stcredzero 15y ago
In his play, Fischer was amazingly objective, long before computers stripped away so many of the dogmas and assumptions humans have used to navigate the game for centuries. Positions that had been long considered inferior were revitalized by Fischer’s ability to look at everything afresh... ...Fischer’s modern interpretation of “victory through clarity” was a revelation. His fresh dynamism started a revolution; the period from 1972 to 1975, when Fischer was already in self-exile as a player, was more fruitful in chess evolution than the entire preceding decade. We need some more of this objectivity in programming. The programming domain is so complex, it's easy for people to create dogmas and defend them with verbal salad. Some more "victory through clarity" would be beneficial.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  I've been thinking about this in recent months, because I've had the good fortune to have worked with some great programmers in the past -- and they didn't read or write blogs or magazine articles or anything of the like. They instead simply showed up to work, treated it like a job, did it, and went home. They didn't care what language they worked with. And, often, they wrote extremely clear, good code, on a foundation of simple concepts -- the kind of concepts which get argued back-and-forth to death on the internet every day. I've believed for years that most of our great programming talent is completely unknown and completely unheard-of, working on antiquated database systems for some company somewhere. Programming "culture", so much as it has one, could benefit a lot from arguing less and doing more.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    Programming "culture", so much as it has one, could benefit a lot from arguing less and doing more. Unless we share data about what we're doing, there's no way to grow this "culture." A way of arguing less and accomplishing more would be to share more objective data.
comatose_kid 15y ago
Really great: "The ability to put in those hours of work is in itself an innate gift. Hard work is a talent."
iamgoat 15y ago
Once it hits video I highly recommend watching Bobby Fischer Against the World. I'll have to read this book even though the author of the article points out that he wishes there was more meat on the early life of Bobby. In the movie, his life was pretty depressing to see. Much like other child prodigies who have a great beginning, years down the road you're wondering what ever happened to them. His awkwardness and ignorance had to have a great affect. I imagine a lot of it came from not having a father figure (or guidance in general) and becoming entirely consumed by chess at such a young age. He really closed himself off in his own world.

gjm11 15y ago

In case anyone's wondering about the title (the article is about Fischer, but not about anyone defending him from anything, nor about any chess opening that bears his name, nor about how he defended in a difficult chess position), I'm pretty sure it's an allusion to Nabokov's novel "Luzhin's Defense" (the English translation is simply titled "The Defense"), about a gifted chess player who gradually falls into insanity as the novel progresses. (It doesn't entirely fit Fischer, who seems to have done most of his going-mad after retiring from his chess career rather than during it, but never mind.)

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- barrkel 15y ago
  It might not be - it might be ghost-written or translated, and certainly has been edited etc. - but it is presented and bylined as though written by Kasparov. Do you have specific other information?
  - jonnathanson 15y ago
    Kasparov is an accomplished and prolific analyst and writer on a wide variety of subjects, and especially (and obviously) chess. Furthermore, this article matches his general writing style -- at least as I've encountered it over the years, across any number of publications. If he's got a ghostwriter, it's the same ghostwriter every time. More likely, however, it's just him. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He's a sharp guy and a sharp writer.
  - mturmon 15y ago
    Kasparov writes for the New York Review occasionally. People here would be even more interested in: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master-and-the-computer/?pagination=false http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-che... which is his reminisces on his several chess matches with computers, and at the end a couple of remarks on poker versus chess.
- DanielStraight 15y ago
  The article is more or less a book review, written by Kasparov, about a book written by Frank Brady. That book is a biography of Fischer. The title of the article is The Bobby Fischer Defense. The title of the book is Endgame. It's a little confusing, but all the information is there.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

btilly 15y ago

It is worth noting that the USA has produced two world champion chess players, both abandoned the game and went crazy. (The other was Paul Morphy: see http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Morphygoescrazy.html http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Morphygoescrazy.html for one contemporary report of his insanity.) Actually Kasparov's grasp of reality is somewhat questionable. For instance read http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm where he demonstrates an astonishing lack of understanding of basic history. (For the first major mistake, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution for why his naive projections of population growth are clearly wrong.)

barrkel 15y ago
A lack of knowledge of British history is hardly grounds for questioning someone's grasp on reality.
- btilly 15y ago
  I'm questioning his grasp of reality because he believes that about a thousand years of recorded history didn't happen, and there is some plot among historians to cover this up. In this particular case a lack of knowledge of British history is a lack of knowledge of world history. The British Agricultural Revolution resulted in major increases in food supply, that allowed populations to grow rapidly. What Britain discovered got exported to the rest of Europe, and European colonies. The result was a greatly expanded carrying capacity for the human population, which enabled a world-wide population explosion. Now granted, most people don't know about this. But if you're curious about the history of population growth in Europe, it really is easy to find out what historians have to say about it. And when you do so you should run across this fairly quickly.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    I do agree, that article is slightly nutty. It has the usual air of a very smart guy getting outside his area of expertise -- one simple observation plus one leap to a rather world-shattering conclusion minus a few key pieces of knowledge which anyone in the actual field should know about. It's not quite the same thing as having a tenuous grasp on reality. It's more like listening to Einstein (or Chomsky) on politics -- very good in one field, rather over-confident in another.

petegrif 15y ago

Great article. I am always amazed by how well K writes.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Isofarro 15y ago

There's an interesting piece about the potential Fischer-Karpov match where Kasparov notes: "This includes testimony by Karpov himself, who said Fischer was the favorite and later put his own chances of victory at 40 percent." This is the same Karpov that a few matches earlier ceded that Spassky would win that current candidates cycle, and then Karpov goes on to beat Spassky quite comfortably in the semi-final match. I think this speaks for Karpov's public-facing modesty and pragmatism, rather than an objective examination of playing strengths. But still, a Fischer-Karpov match could have been absolutely epic, perhaps potentially surpassing the previous Spassky-Fischer match.

Jun8 15y ago

I liked this insightful comment: "Then on January 17, 2008, he died in Reykjavík after a long illness for which he had refused treatment. Even this was somehow typical of Fischer, who grew up playing chess against himself since he had no one else to play. He had fought to the end and proven himself to be his most dangerous opponent." It seems like Fischer was playing against himself all his life. That being said, I don't think today's cold, database driven world of chess (e.g. see http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_max http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_...) would have had much use for his individuality, had he stayed the course. He probably would have lost to the new breed of players. Good for him, then, to stay a legend, albeit a disturbing one.

jonnathanson 15y ago
There was a great New Yorker piece a few months back about the new generation of computer-raised chess players, typified by present-day wunderkind Magnus Carlsen. The piece is concerned primarily with Carlsen and his rise to fame in the chess world -- but, being a New Yorker article, it's also quite discursive and takes a few fun tangents along the way. One of which is a dissection of computer-age chess players and chess-playing computer algorithms. The general consensus among chess grandmasters is that the best algorithms out there are undeniably impossible for a human to defeat -- but yet, they play "ugly" chess. They're using a brute-force style of AI and can beat a human player down through sheer speed of calculation, and/or perfect recall of vast databases of former games. Someone like Kasparov would argue that a computer chess master is no more the intellectual superior of a human master than a calculator is the intellectual superior of a human mathematics PhD. Finally, the article did confirm a suspicion held among some AI theorists and neuroscientists these days, which is that a combined human/AI "team" can defeat any lone human or lone AI. In the case of folks like Carlsen, the thinking is that this new generation will soar to new heights precisely because it has trained with and against computers, thus piecing together a best-of-both-worlds approach.
- gnosis 15y ago
  "Someone like Kasparov would argue that a computer chess master is no more the intellectual superior of a human master than a calculator is the intellectual superior of a human mathematics PhD." Except that there's a lot more to being good at math than just being good at calculation and memorization; not so in chess (at least not against computers). Computers have proven that they've got what it takes to win the game. And, ultimately, that's all that really matters in chess as it is presently designed. Of course, there are plenty of chess variants (not to mention games like Go) which are a lot harder for computers to play well. It is quite likely that that's where most serious chess players will migrate to over time. In fact, for the last decades of his life, Bobby Fischer himself refused to play anything but Fischer Random Chess (also known as Chess 960), a variant which made it practically impossible to memorize a significant portion of opening theory, since in this variant there is not just a single opening position as in regular chess, but 960 of them.

rrrazdan 15y ago

Here is a link to the famous 'Game of the Century' by Bobby. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008361 http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008361

nicetryguy 15y ago

Kasparov is a surprisingly eloquent writer

gaius 15y ago
Why surprising? Because he's Russian?
- nicetryguy 15y ago
  Pleasantly surprising. I wouldn't naturally associate a smooth pen and lingual beauty with a chess champion

te_platt 15y ago

Addressing the theory that Fischer was afraid to play again after becoming world champion Kasparov writes: "Brady’s dismissal of this theory misses the point: 'What everyone seemed to overlook was that at the board Bobby feared no one.' Yes, once at the board he was fine! Where Fischer had his greatest crisis of confidence was always before getting to the board, before getting on the plane. Fischer’s perfectionism, his absolute belief that he could not fail, did not allow him to put that perfection at risk." That applies to much more than just chess. In fact I found the whole article not just very well written but poignant on many levels.

rohwer 15y ago

As an addendum, the final round of the current world championship candidates matches are starting. See http://kazan2011.fide.com/ http://kazan2011.fide.com/ or This Week In Chess http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/ http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/

stcredzero 15y ago

In his play, Fischer was amazingly objective, long before computers stripped away so many of the dogmas and assumptions humans have used to navigate the game for centuries. Positions that had been long considered inferior were revitalized by Fischer’s ability to look at everything afresh... ...Fischer’s modern interpretation of “victory through clarity” was a revelation. His fresh dynamism started a revolution; the period from 1972 to 1975, when Fischer was already in self-exile as a player, was more fruitful in chess evolution than the entire preceding decade. We need some more of this objectivity in programming. The programming domain is so complex, it's easy for people to create dogmas and defend them with verbal salad. Some more "victory through clarity" would be beneficial.

thaumaturgy 15y ago
I've been thinking about this in recent months, because I've had the good fortune to have worked with some great programmers in the past -- and they didn't read or write blogs or magazine articles or anything of the like. They instead simply showed up to work, treated it like a job, did it, and went home. They didn't care what language they worked with. And, often, they wrote extremely clear, good code, on a foundation of simple concepts -- the kind of concepts which get argued back-and-forth to death on the internet every day. I've believed for years that most of our great programming talent is completely unknown and completely unheard-of, working on antiquated database systems for some company somewhere. Programming "culture", so much as it has one, could benefit a lot from arguing less and doing more.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  Programming "culture", so much as it has one, could benefit a lot from arguing less and doing more. Unless we share data about what we're doing, there's no way to grow this "culture." A way of arguing less and accomplishing more would be to share more objective data.

comatose_kid 15y ago

Really great: "The ability to put in those hours of work is in itself an innate gift. Hard work is a talent."

iamgoat 15y ago

Once it hits video I highly recommend watching Bobby Fischer Against the World. I'll have to read this book even though the author of the article points out that he wishes there was more meat on the early life of Bobby. In the movie, his life was pretty depressing to see. Much like other child prodigies who have a great beginning, years down the road you're wondering what ever happened to them. His awkwardness and ignorance had to have a great affect. I imagine a lot of it came from not having a father figure (or guidance in general) and becoming entirely consumed by chess at such a young age. He really closed himself off in his own world.