Author: Brian Richardson
Date: 07:30:00 09/09/01
http://news.telegraph.co.uk Bobby Fischer takes on all comers - in cyberspace By Andrew Allerson, Chief Reporter (Filed: 09/09/2001) BOBBY FISCHER, who became world chess champion in 1972 by triumphing in the most famous match ever played, and who then retired to a hermit-like existence of total obscurity, has been discovered playing the game anonymously on the internet against fellow Grandmasters. The disclosure that Fischer has emerged from a virtual 30-year self-imposed exile is made today in The Sunday Telegraph Review by Nigel Short, the British Grandmaster who in 1993 was the official challenger to Garry Kasparov. Short says that he has played nearly 50 speed chess games against Fischer during the past year. "I am 99 per cent sure that I have been playing against the chess legend. It's tremendously exciting," said Short. He has overwhelming evidence that the man who beat him comfortably is the same man who defeated Boris Spassky, the Russian world champion, in an epic battle of the "superpowers" in Reykjavik in 1972. Afterwards Fischer disappeared from the public eye until 1992, when he briefly returned to play Spassky again for a 20th anniversary re-match in the-then pariah state of Serbia. Fischer won a prize of more than £2 million, playing brilliant chess, before disappearing again, hotly pursued by the US Government, which had indicted him for breaking the UN embargo of Serbia. Short had been told by a Greek Grandmaster last year that Fischer, now 58, had been playing anonymously on the internet, but was sceptical. Short, however, eventually arranged to play the anonymous opponent and during their games began "chatting" with him over the internet. In October last year, in the first of their four confrontations, Short lost 8-0. Short is one of the world's best speed chess players, and in 1995 drew a series of speed chess games 6-6 against Kasparov, the then world champion. Short says: "In my opinion Fischer is a much stronger speed chess player than Kasparov, which is incredible when one considers that at 58 he is virtually a geriatric in terms of the modern game." The final "proof" that Short was playing Fischer in cyberspace came when the Briton asked: "Do you know Armando Acevedo?" - an obscure Mexican player. The response was immediate: "Siegen 1970." Fischer had played Acevedo in the Siegen Chess Olympiad of 1970. "The guy was obviously trying to tell me something," said Short. Short initially intended to keep his games a secret, but decided to disclose them as rumours are spreading in the chess world of Fischer's apparent re-emergence. Fischer is believed to be living in Japan. Short fears that today's disclosure means he will never play Fischer again. But their games will live with him. "To me, they are what an undiscovered Mozart symphony would be to a music lover," he said.
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