Author: Mark Loftus
Date: 05:28:26 04/13/99
Go up one level in this thread
On April 10, 1999 at 10:50:17, Lawrence S. Tamarkin wrote: >On April 10, 1999 at 09:37:54, eric guttenberg wrote: > >>I suspect "fear of losing" may have been a factor in Fischer's quitting >>after he won the championship in 1972. That fear may have been a motivating >>factor for him on the way to the title but once he had nowhere to go but >>down, it may have become a disabling factor. If you want to call that >>"cowardice", I won't argue-you are probably right. >>But I think it is unfair to let personal dislike of a person, however >>justified, cause us to ignore facts. >>Let's face it, ELO ratings are pretty relative anyway and are probably >>a poor way to compare players from different eras. Does a 2700 rating >>in 1970 have the same meaning as a 2700 rating in 1999? The fact is >>that between March 1970 when Fischer beat Petrosian 3-1 in the World vs. >>USSR match and September 1972 when he won the title, Fischer showed a >>degree of dominance that had not been seen in chess in over a hundred >>years. He played in , I believe 3 extremely strong tournaments, >>winning them all. He played in a very powerful blitz tournament and won >>by a huge margin. He won 3 candidates matches against 3 of the best >>grandmasters around-two of them by shutout scores of 6-0. And he beat >>a very highly regarded Spassky by 12 1/2- 8 1/2, including a forfeiture >>loss. >> >>In that 2 1/2 year period, he played roughly 100 games, not counting >>speed tournaments, lost only 5 and at one point, covering the end of >>the interzonal and the candidates matches, won 20 games in a row, >>without even a draw against the best grandmasters in the world. >> >>A few years ago, I read a quote from Kasparov that he viewed Fischer >>as the all-time greatest player because he believed the best way to >>measure that is to look at the gap between the player in question and >>his contemproraries and Fischer's gap was "huge". >> >>Whatever Fischer has done since 1972, I think it is only fair to >>recognize that at one time he was a great competitor, with skill and >>courage. What he has become since then is a different story, but >>that shouldn't erase his accomplishments from the stream of >>history. >> >>eric > > >Why not? Fischer thinks there was no Holocust. He deserves the same >consideration from history as all the Jews, Polish and other millions who >perrished in Historys greatest disaster. Oh, I forgot, it never happened... > > >mrslug - the inkompetent chess software addict! lighten up mrslug, reverse prejudice is not cool either the hatred has to stop somewhere the world has a lot of mixed up people, shall we hate them all Mark Loftus
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