26 October 2010

Three Fischer Games Uncensored

In my previous post, Gligoric - Fischer, Bled 1961, I happened to notice that the Chessgames.com page on that particular rivalry -- Robert James Fischer beat Svetozar Gligoric (+7-4=8) -- mentioned three training games played in 1992. I finished the post with one of my typical promises, 'I don't recall ever seeing the training games, so I'll look at those in a separate post.' This is one promise I'll fulfill ASAP. I didn't have to look far. The source was revealed in comments to the first of the three games: Svetozar Gligoric vs Robert James Fischer (1992).

Oct-08-10 TheFocus: I and parisattack submitted these three training games. Originally they appeared in Bobby Fischer Uncensored by David DeLucia. [...] There were ten games in all. Each player White 5 times. In his next book, perhaps DeLucia will release the other seven.

The best summary of 'Fischer Uncensored' that I could find is in the June 2009 archive of Chess Notes by Edward Winter.

6189. Bobby Fischer Uncensored: One of the most extraordinary of all chess books has just been published: Bobby Fischer Uncensored by David and Alessandra DeLucia (Darien, 2009). A richly-illustrated 394-page hardback of supreme quality, it presents hundreds of items from David DeLucia’s collection of Fischer material, including photographs, game-scores, correspondence, contracts, books and ephemera. [...]

A page from Dutch bookseller Van Stockum, Bobby Fischer Uncensored - DeLucia, D. & A. DeLucia, appears to be taken from the book's introduction.

When Bobby Fischer died on January 17, 2008 I decided to write a book on him, similar to my prior books on my chess library, which would encompass only Fischer items from my collection. Altough my chess collection has evolved in many ways over the past 25 years, I have always had a keen interest in certain players like Morphy, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine and Fischer. Today, the collection houses close to 4000 items from these five great chess masters, the vast majority of which are signed by, written by or were personal possessions of these extraordinary players. The Fischer collection consists of approximately 1600 items, excluding books written on him, which span his entire life.
That page also links to scanned photos from the book. A few other references worth mentioning are:

I mentioned the training match itself in a recent post on my chess960 blog, The Rampant Expansion of Theory.

Gligoric: [In preparation for his 1992 match with Spassky], Bobby asked if I could play a training match with him. At first I didn’t want to, but I had to give in to his wishes. He was panicking about how theory had developed during his twenty-year absence from chess. That was why he came up with his own version of chess, where the starting position would be determined by the drawing of lots. And he began to torment me with persistent requests to write a book about it.

These training games were indirectly related to the creation of chess960. Who could have guessed?

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