From: jansteen@cwi.nl (Jan van der Steen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Re: Fischer-Spassky- Game 1, questions and stuff
Date: 3 Sep 92 13:23:05 GMT

blowfish@carina.unm.edu (rON.) writes:

[a very interesting analyse of fisher-spasski game 1]

This was a very nice way to analyse a chess game.
The analyse stressed the strategic part of the game and thus
made it most useful, especially for the weaker player.

I have a few notes:

* The pawn structure in the centre constrained (as often is the
  case) the players strategy. Spasski should develop the king side
  and Fisher the queen side.
  I was much suprised when I saw Spasski's move 22...-Ndf6 making
  the normal procedure (breaking the king side with f7-f5) impossible.

* The Fisher plan (trippling on the a-line followed by Nb1) was
  simple but devastating. It threatens to exchange all heavy pieces
  (a4xb5, et cetera...) and win a pawn with Na3.
  It reminded me of the old Fisher, simple plan but difficult to see.

* Spasski lost the game because Fisher could execute the above plan
  without being disturbed by counters on the other side of the board.
  This was due to the "clumsy" way Spasski arranged his pieces there.

* The piece sacrifice 29...-Nxe4 was an emergency measure. Actually,
  the game was lost at this point. Spasski gets two pawns for the
  piece but no extra piece activity whatsoever. Actually it's Fisher
  who breaks up the position with 36.g4(!).
  Spasski tries to keep it closed (with 38...-f4) but at this point
  Fisher gives back the extra piece and finishes the game off with
  some skillful piece maneuvering.

>Questions-
>1) What was Spassky's 'game plan'? 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.)

Right you are. In my opinion once Spasski played 22...-Ndf6 he admitted
that his strategy (playing f7-f5) failed. At that point the game was
already bad for black and maybe in a higher sense lost too.

>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?)

Just gambling I guess. Maybe there were some ways Fisher could go wrong.
A passive defense would surely have lost at that point.

>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? :)

I think so, but maybe we should wait for the professionals to post
their analysis and compare...

>Thanks for looking it over!

I enjoyed it very much! Thank you too.

Jan van der Steen (reasonable in Chess, fond of Go)
-- 
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     Jan van der Steen                 jansteen@cwi.nl
     Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI)
     Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess