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Leisure
An
Evening with Boris Spassky | Spassky-Bronstein
USSR Championship 1960 King's Gambit
Grandmaster
Larry Evans Lecture | Fischer-Evans
Game
Boris
Spassky Events
Simultaneous
Exhibition | Book Signing
Event | Chess Lecture
Review
of Clash of the Titans BBC Documentary
Grandmaster
Larry Evans Lecture
Not only were tournament participants able to see Boris, local Reno
GM and longtime friend and second of Bobby Fischer, Larry Evans
also gave a presentation on current affairs in chess.
Larry played a tape of a CNN News story from the Paula Zahn show
where he and Donald Schultz from the USCF talked about the Bobby
Fischer situation.
The point of the discussion was that Lothar Schmidt had no problem
returning to Germany after the match and that Boris Spassky had
no problem returning to France after the 1992 match yet Bobby was
not allowed to play, but did anyway, and has since had troubles.
Update==> Bobby
Fischer and his fiance are now living in Iceland having been granted
citizenship with that country. He recently
commented on a local Icelandic chess match about a combination that
neither player saw during a televised match. See ChessBase
website for details.
Other topics brought up at the session revealed the following:
• In the 1963/4 US Championship, all the players were hoping
Anthony Saidy would draw with Fischer in the last round so it wouldn't
be a shutout and appear as a rout.
• Larry discussed his years of doing the American Chess Quarterly
magazine where Bobby published his famous 'Bust to the King's Gambit'.
He reviewed how difficult it was to finally get the 60 Memorable
Games book published.
• Larry related that when Bobby stayed with him for a period
of time at his home in Virginia City that neither of his 2 dogs
liked him and that he had a healthy sense of paranoia about traveling
in the family car.
• One time while doing an exhibition at the Pasadena Jailhouse
that Fischer was considering doing a walk out during the event to
see if the guards would stop or shoot him. Later the warden told
him that force would not have been used.
• Larry felt that after 1972 that Bobby even though he said
he was going to be an active champion would drift off into the wilderness
years. He said, "It was ironic that the more you got
to know about him, the less you wanted to find him."
• In answer to how Bobby ranked in the chess world today compared
to his era, it was felt that there was more of a gap between him
and his generation of players than exists with Karpov/Kasparov today
and their contemporaries.
• To show how opinion can change, in 1966 the King
of Monaco said he would only conduct a tournament if Bobby Fischer
participated, the following year he said he would only hold a tournament
if Bobby Fischer didn't play.
Larry then went over the 1958-59 US Championship game he played
with Fischer against his vaunted Sozin attack. He was one of the
first players to successfully hold his own against Fischer's pet
line.
Fischer-Evans
US Championship 1958
Nadjorf Sicilian
1. e4 c5 2.Nf3
d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bc4 at
the time this was played it was the cutting edge of theory in this
line. Since then thousands of games using this line have occurred
including many in world championship matches like Nigel Short vs.Garry
Kasparov. 6…e6 7.Bb3 Be7 . Now
theory holds that going after the bishop immediately with Nd7 is
a strong alternative. 8.Be3 0-0 9.0-0 Nc6 10.f4 Na5 11.g4
going all out for the Kingside attack. 11…d5 the
flank attack is met by a central counter 12.e5 Nd7 13.Qf3
Qc7 14.h4 Larry said he fed this to 'Fritz'
and he can take the pawn and get away with it & and besides
he offered it. Nc4 15.Bc4 dxc4
 16 a4 b6 offering the 2
rooks for the queen which certainly stops any white attack 17.h5
Bb7 18Qg3 h6 At this point Larry Evans was asked why he
played that move since it seems to give white a target for the attack
against the King. His response was "at the time I knew and
God knew, now only God knows!" 19.Rae1 Rad8 20.Re2
Kh8 21.Rh2 Ba8 22.Re1 Bc5 Fritz likes
Bb4 and says Black is .81 ahead if played 23.Qf2
this gives Black a good game Fritz likes it for Black by .91
Rde8 24.Nf3 Be3 25.Qe3 Qc5 26.Qc5 Nc5 27.Nd2 1/2-1/2 Fritz
actually likes White better at the end by .47 Black has to be concerned
about the pawn on c4 and White has no weaknesses at the moment.
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