From: blowfish@carina.unm.edu (rON.)
Subject: Fischer-Spassky- Game 1, questions and stuff
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 92 07:26:56 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Now, note that these questions/comments are from somebody who plays a lot
of Go- very little Chess anymore, really. I just want to see if my overall
impressions on what happened in the game are accurate :)

The opening- Fischer had what seemed as a gung-ho, lets get developed and get
it over with so we can move onto the meat of the game, sort of opening, while
Spassky was a bit more 'conservative'.

Some where in the middle, Spassky made a bad mistake- more 19 ... Nh7
The 'influence' on the board shifted- Spassky was stronger on the right, and
weaker on the left. Fischer jumped on this and started pumping power onto
the left side of the board- spending 5 straight moves in a row (22-26) to
put two rooks and his queen on the A line. Meanwhile, Spassky was trapped
on the right side of the board behind his slower development and the balance
in the center- spending moves on getting pieces back towards his side of
the board (from 21-28, moving 4 pieces to row 8, 3 to row 7, including
shuffling his king to keep the balance on the upper right quadrant of the
board, and 1 to row 6).

Then there was some quick re-arranging of the center, and then Fischer 
attacked the right side- getting the pawn out of the way, then sliding his
rook to row 7 (33 Ra7). Spassky was prepared to deal with this, having
moved power to the top of the board, but after a pawn exchange on the now
weaker right side left the center more open, Fischer pulled out 39 Bf4.
The way I saw it, this move put big pressure on the lonely looking pawn
on e5- which was gaurding e4 and f5 from Fischers knight. Spassky took the
bishop, and Fischer slid a knight to the right (40 Nh4) to draw power
away from the center. After a check, Fischer took advantage of the open
f5 spot to put his knight in the center of the board (a good place for
knights to be, right? :)

After a bit, on move 44, Spassky did something that I am not sure about- he
put white in check (44 ... Qe1). Why? After another exchange of center
pieces, white shut the queen out (47 Ne4), leaving blacks queen stuck on
row 1, while white had big ol' influence in the center, over-burdening
blacks knight and bishop. With blacks queen stuck in the hinterlands, white
ate up blacks defenses, and, on move 50, Spassky had to resign.

Questions-
1) What was Spassky's 'gameplan'? It seemed to me that he looked intent on
attacking the right side, but didn't have his heart in it. Then, in the
mid-game, when Fischer started to pound the left, Spassky looked almost
frantic trying to cram his pieces towards the top for defense- and Fischer
was pretty well dictating the pace of the game then (he seemed to have, what
we call in Go, 'sente', a.k.a. The offense, momentum, the edge, etc.)

2) Why did Spassky make move 44? (asked above). It seemed wrong, but was
there anything better? Would an 'influence' move- say shuffling the queen
towards the center somewhere to give it a better 'vantage' point been better
than trying for what seemed to be the 'quick kill'? (was it an attempt at
a quick kill?)

3) Was the above analysis vaguely correct? :) (I know- its not really
an 'analysis' in Chess terms- no 'Well, if Spassky had played this 
instead of that there would be the line....' like you are used to, but
is the general ideas correct? :)

Thanks for looking it over!
r.