Fischer - Geller, Bled 1961

My first task in restarting 18 Memorable Months (August 2009), the most recent post in the series on 18 Memorable Games (January 2008), was to remember why I was doing it in the first place. I often leave myself sticky notes in my posts and the 2008 post was no exception: the purpose of the series is to identify 'differences in opinion between the 11th and the 13th World Champions'. With that in mind, I'll start with a PGN game score showing the punctuation from the game that was no.29 in Fischer's 60 Memorable Games and no.66 in Kasparov's Predecessors IV.

[Event "Bled"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "1961.??.??"]
[Round "6"]
[White "Fischer, R."]
[Black "Geller, E."]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C72"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6 5.O-O Bg4 {KAS: '!?'} 6.h3 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 6...Bh5 7.c3 Qf6 {FIS: '?'; KAS: '?'} 8.g4 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 8...Bg6 9.d4 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 9...Bxe4 10.Nbd2 Bg6 11.Bxc6+ bxc6 12.dxe5 {KAS: '!'} 12...dxe5 13.Nxe5 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 13...Bd6 14.Nxg6 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 14...Qxg6 15.Re1+ Kf8 16.Nc4 h5 17.Nxd6 cxd6 18.Bf4 d5 {FIS: '?'; KAS: '?'} 19.Qb3 {KAS: '!'} 19...hxg4 20.Qb7 {FIS: '!'; KAS: '!'} 20...gxh3+ 21.Bg3 Rd8 22.Qb4+ 1-0

There's not much difference in opinion on this game, a Fischer steamroller from start to finish. Maybe an engine can find something interesting on the alternatives to 18...d5. I'll look at that in another post.

To play through the complete game, see...

Robert James Fischer vs Efim Geller, Bled 1961
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008405

...on Chessgames.com.