From: met48546@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Marc E. Talbot)
Subject: Re: Listen Up, Bobby Bashers
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 14:28:23 GMT
Keywords: bobby, champ

tafrakes@athena.mit.edu (T. Andy Frakes) writes:

>Anyone who knows anything about chess and Bobby knows who
>the real champ is.  These two piddly K-dudes are totally
>outclassed in chess ability.  One of the reasons Bobby quit

Outclassed?  On what do you base this enlightened assumption?

>chess is out of boredom.  It takes a lot of fun out of the
>game when no one out there can give you a good mental work-
>out.  Before he quit, he had nothing else to prove.  He was
>the best and he knew it.  He could have hung around a

Yes, at the time Fischer was the best.  That's what being world champion means.
That's why Kasparov is now world champion.  Because HE is the best.  If
Fischer wanted to play Kasparov, he could have.  He chose Spassky
because he was fairly sure he'd win.

>little longer to keep pounding on people and keep breaking
>his own rating records, but that gets old pretty quick --
>where is he supposed to draw the line? 2780? 3000? Who cares?
>It's like being in a foot race with a bunch of turtles.  "Hmm,
>let's see....how badly should I beat them this time" or "How
>much of a lead should I give them this time" or "Hey! Maybe,
>I'll forfeit a game and just not show up just to shake things
>up a little."  The only way he can even give himself a decent
>challenge is to give every one 20 years to catch up and come
>out of retirement as a 50 year old man.  He hasn't even had
>time to oil all his rusty joints yet and he's STILL mowing
>down the competition.  If Kasparov or any other contemporary
>players had done the same thing, they'd be getting pummelled at
>this very moment.  Of course, any other player wouldn't be
>getting $5M to play a match like this.  With this 20-year
>absence from the game, he's effectively playing with half his
>brain tied behind his back and it STILL isn't a fair fight.
>There wouldn't be any controversy over who is the champ if
>Kasparov would just be a man and quit ducking Bobby.  Bobby's
>willing to let Kasparov take his best shot at the champ if he
>wants, but he keeps hiding behind the Candidates' Matches that
>everyone knows Bobby has no intention of wasting his valuable
>time with.  People are willing to pay a lot more money to see
>the REAL champ play.

Um...yeah...right.  Who's ducking who?  Fischer was the one who said that
he would not play Kasparov unless some Russian publishers paid him a lot
of money.  As for Bobby's "valuable time", what's he been doing with it for
the last 20 years?  Fischer doesn't want to play in the candidate matches
because there's a good chance that he wouldn't make it as far as Kasparov.

>As far as contributions to chess....Bobby has made far greater
>contributions to chess than Kasparov.  Playing lots of games
>and being "active" in tournaments is all well and good, but not
>if nobody is playing or interested.  Bobby increased interest in
>chess far more than Kasparov.  Suppose (strictly for argument's

Fischer increased interest in chess in the United States.  He wasn't
nearly as much of a boom in Europe (except for Iceland).  Kasparov has
at least been an active and visible world champion who has done a great
deal to promote chess, something that Fischer did only by acting
outrageously enough to  call attention to himself.

>sake) that Kasparov had found all kinds of theoretical
>novelties and eventually solved chess, but the chessplaying
>population doesn't really go anywhere because he doesn't create
>any excitement about the game.  Then, suppose Bobby doesn't make
>any contributions to theory, but creates a world craze out of the
>game.  Who, then, has made the best contribution to chess?  It's
>a rhetorical question, but I'll answer it for you anyway (all the
>sane people please excuse me)....the answer is Bobby, of course.

>It's been a long time coming, but I'm glad Bobby finally came out
>of retirement to remind the rest of the world where the best chess
>is really played....The United States of America.  Some of the
>other countries may have more and better chumps than the US, but
>there is only one CHAMP and that's Bobby -- made in the USA. 

Please.  You're making me ill.

>-- 
>T. Andy Frakes (tafrakes@athena.mit.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess