Fischer: 'That's my answer'

Continuing with the 'Fischer Friday' series, last seen in 1992 Fischer - Spassky 'Under the Weather' (September 2022), in that post I wrote,

Photo D1 is about a moment from the opening press conference that is more famous than any of the games played in the match. It shows Fischer with the letter that led to the famous spit incident.

The composite image including that photo in black & white is seen below, with 'photo D1' circled in red. Superimposed on the composite is a similar photo in color.

The eBay auction offering the color photo said,

You are bidding on an original press photo from 9/2/1992. Chess legend Bobby Fischer holds a letter from the U.S. government at a news conference in Yugoslavia. The letter said his match with Russia's Boris Spassky violates sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro. Fischer spat on the letter. Photo is 8.5" x 11" in size. This photo originates from the archives of the Chicago Sun Times and Daily News, Detroit News, and Sports Magazine. Most photos have never been seen by the public.

That incident was recorded in a Sports Illustrated (SI) article by William Nack dated 14 September 1992: The Fischer King (vault.si.com; Sports Illustrated Vault).

The Fischer King • In the surreal setting of war-torn Yugoslavia, reclusive chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer emerged to meet Boris Spassky

[...] Fischer made something of a spec-tac-le [sic] of himself on the eve of the match, when he held forth at a press conference that was quite as memorable as anything [American baseball pitcher] Roger Clemens ever contrived. Few of the hundred or so members of the press in attendance had ever seen Fischer, and when he arrived, all eyes turned and followed him as he walked with his loping, ungainly gait to the front of the room, looking much as he did seven years ago—down to the balding pate and the thin beard—when an obsessed magazine writer found him in the L.A. Public Library (SI, July 29, 1985). Settling into a chair in the Hotel Maestral, Fischer studied the written questions that reporters had submitted to him and began by saying, "I'll start off with, umm, ah, some impudent questions from The New York Times [Roger Cohen]."

With traces of Brooklyn still in his voice, he read one question after another. " 'Why, after turning down so many offers to come back, did you accept this one?' That's not quite true. As I recollect, Karpov, in 1975, was the one who refused to play me under my conditions, which is basically the same conditions we are playing now.... 'Do you feel that your chess has improved over the past 20 years?' Well, we'll see.... 'If you beat Spassky, will you go on to challenge Kasparov for the world championship?' "

Here Fischer turned and pointed to the large sign behind him that announced this affair: THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP. "Can he read what it says behind here?" asked Fischer, to applause. " 'Are you worried by U.S. government threats over your defiance of sanctions?' " At this point he reached for his briefcase and pulled out a letter from the U.S. Treasury Department warning him that by playing the match, he risked stiff fines and 10 years in jail for violating President Bush's executive order imposing economic sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro. "So," Fischer said, "here is my reply to their order not to defend my title here." Holding the letter in front of him, he spit on it, and added, "That's my answer."

Reporters gaped incredulously at one another. Asked if he supported the United Nations' sanctions against Yugoslavia, Fischer launched upon an attack of the U.N. for rescinding "a pretty good resolution against Israel about Zionism is racism...." He was merely warming up to the subject. " 'Do you regard yourself as an anti-Communist fighter?' First of all, we have to understand what communism is. I mean, to me, real communism, the Soviet communism, is basically a mask for Bolshevism, which is a mask for Judaism." And when asked about his being widely characterized as anti-Semitic, Fischer replied, "In the first place, this term anti-Semitism is a nonsense term, because my understanding is that the Arabs are also Semites, not only the Jews, so I don't know what that means. I'm definitely not anti-Arab."' [...]

I once did a short series on chess articles in Sports Illustrated. For the last post in that series, see Browne: 'I got this aggression that never quits' (July 2017; 'let's squeeze one more post out of the aging Sports Illustrated reports on chess'). William Nack, the author of the 1992 SI article quoted above, was also the author of the July 1985 article mentioned in the first paragraph of the 'The Fischer King' excerpt. For a link to that article plus a list of related SI articles -- including 'The Fischer King' -- see the post, Fischer: 'I'm not seeing people' (June 2017).

Cheating Mania

It didn't take a crystal ball to predict that this month's Yahoos' post (see the footnote for an explanation of 'Yahoos') was going to be about Carlsen/Nakamura vs. Niemann, aka the chess cheating affair. The scandal broke three weeks ago and shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon. I've already featured it twice, the second time in Talkchess Talks Current Topics (September 2022).

Unlike all previous posts in the Yahoos series, this month requires two charts to present the base statistics, shown below. On the left are the counts derived from Google News, similar to the chart in last month's Olympiad, Business, and Political Yahoos (August 2022).

On the right are counts from a special supplement, linked from the Google News results and called 'Full Coverage'. These stories were 100% about the cheating scandal. The last time we saw this type of coverage was for Queen's Gambit Mania (October 2020), another Yahoos' post that confirmed the chess boom provoked by the twin phenomena of covid confinement and Netflix.

Of the 99 stories returned by Google News, 78 were from the month of September. The seven sources in the list account for at least two of the 78 stories, leaving 32 sources with a single story.

Of the 56 results returned for the 'Full Coverage' supplement, four were from Twitter. Of the other 52 stories, five sources accounted for at least two stories, leaving 41 sources with a single story. That means mainstream news about chess is on steroids. I imagine that one of the reasons for the extensive coverage is the interest in chess fueled by the recent boom.

Back to Google News, none of the 24 Chess.com stories had anything to do with cheating; ditto for the 10 New York Times (NYT) stories. Seven of the NYT stories were titled 'Play NYT Chess Puzzle', making me wonder once again if these aren't inserts paid by the NYT. What's newsworthy about a chess puzzle?

Of the other 44 (=78-34) Google News stories, 17 were about cheating. The same two stories appeared at the top of both the Google News and the 'Full Coverage' lists. Both were published yesterday:-

• 2022-09-28: In chess, a long history of cheating, chicanery and Cold War shenanigans (washingtonpost.com)
• 2022-09-28: How do you even cheat in chess? Artificial intelligence and Morse code (cnn.com)

The last time we saw this sort of widepread media interest in chess cheating was for the 2006 Kramnik - Topalov Unification Match (m-w.com), aka Toiletgate. The 2022 scandal also descended quickly to speculative vulgarity. Chess deserves better.

[Yahoos (mainstream news stories about chess) are derived from Google News top-100 (or so) stories from the past month.]

TCEC S23 Paused; 'CCC19 Blitz Main' Underway

Another fortnight has passed since our previous report on the planet's top-two, ongoing, engine vs. engine competitions: TCEC S23 L1, CCC19 Blitz - Both Underway (September 2022). Here's a summary of that report:-

TCEC: S23 L2 finished with four engines promoting. The 12-engine L1 is in the second of its four round robins. • CCC: Dragon edged Lc0 by three points in the 'CCC18 Rapid Challenger' match. Later the site started a series of 'CCC19 Blitz' events. Between CCC18 and CCC19, the CCC launched an eight-engine 'Chess 324 Bonus' event.

In the two intervening weeks, both sites have progressed. The following is the latest on TCEC S23 and CCC19.

TCEC: S23 L1 finished with Ethereal and Berserk promoting into the Premier Division (DivP). Before DivP starts, the site is running 'S23 - Viewer Submitted Openings Bonus 22', with the terse !next explanation 'VSOB22 until replacement GPU'. For the previous discussion of VSOB on this blog, see Stockfish Wins TCEC DFRC1, Leads CCC18 Rapid Final (August 2022). VSOB appears to be the stand-by filler when the regular schedule of TCEC events is paused.

CCC: In the previous post, 'CCC19 Blitz Underway', I also wrote, 'It's not clear what direction [the CCC] intends to take with the new season, so I'll say no more for this current post.' The site is currently running 'CCC19 Blitz: Main' with 10 engines. This was preceded by three other 'CCC19 Blitz' events: 'Newcomers' (6 engines), 'Qualifier #1' (8), and 'Qualifier #2' (8). 'Where it stops, nobody knows!'.

The site's !next command says, 'Main Event: Stockfish, Leela, Dragon, Ethereal, Slowchess, Berserk, +4 top engines from Qualifier #2.' The CCC's Club and Discord sites are both silent.

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero; Dragon = KomodoDragon]

'The Root of All Evil'?

In this blog's long-running monthly series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), this is the second post in a row to deal with the so-called 'root of all evil'. Last month we had Was Fischer Avaricious? (August 2022).

Who Has Won The Most Money In Chess History? (2:45) • '[Published on] Aug 25, 2022'

The description said,

The highest-earning chess players throughout history. We collected data from 1851 to now and here are the results! How do Kasparov, Carlsen, Fischer, Anand and Hikaru compare in this chess timeline of prizewinners?

The description linked to a related article: Who Is The Biggest Prizewinner In Chess History? (chess.com; Nathaniel Green). Unlike too many comments to a typical Chess.com article, some here are spot on.

'Should add Naka Twitch' and 'xQc should be in list', but later 'Nakamura is a streamer, not a chess player, so this is a meaningless comparison.'

'Did you include any of the matches versus computers that were played by Kasparov, Kramnik and Anand? Did you include the top level rapid and blitz tournaments? Did you include the Melody Amber tournaments?'

And on an unrelated, but topical point: 'Kasparov accused the computer of cheating. Funny. At that time, dishonesty meant tips from people. Now it's the other way around.'

The last time I featured a similar video in a post (also in the series 'Sociology of Chess') was Top Tweeters (August 2020). I called it the 'time travel bar chart technique'. Watch what happens starting 1:30 into the clip.

1992 Fischer - Spassky 'Under the Weather'

This post could have been the next in the 'under the weather' series, last seen in Not the 'Under the Weather' Channel (November 2021), but I've found that keeping busy is a good medicine for a bad cold. That and lots of sleep.

Instead I'll continue the 'Fischer Friday' series, seen last week in FS 1972 + 20 = FS 1992 (September 2022). In that post I wrote,

I don't have much in my photo archive about the 1992 [Fischer - Spassky] match. The following composite image shows the wirephotos that I found. These are black-and-white photos, although there are also many color photos documenting the match.

For color photos, let's return to a technique last seen in The Sociology of Chess in Images (September 2021), shown in the following composite image.

Google image search on '1992 Fischer Spassky'
[Call the rows 'A' to 'F' (from top to bottom) and number the images in each row '1' to '8' (from left to right).]

Unlike all of the previous posts using the chessboard naming scheme, this latest post combines the first two pages returned in the Google image search. More photos mean more fun, and more fun means more to talk about.

The first thumbnail (A1) leads to a page dated May 2011, Fischer - Spassky 1992 (chess.com; IM Silman), which opens with a question worthy of a FAQ about the match: How good were the games?:-

In Andrew Soltis' book BOBBY FISCHER REDISCOVERED, page 278, he states (regarding the rematch in 1992 with Spassky), "In fact the match games were of a fairly high quality particularly when compared with Kasparov’s championship matches of 1993, 1995 and 2000, for example." Kasparov has ridiculed the quality of play in this match while Soltis who featured the 1st and 11th Svefi [sic; Sveti] Stefan games in his book felt otherwise. Your opinion?

The thumbnails with a yellow border (A2, A4, and B3) lead to Youtube videos. The Youtube channels aren't given.

Some of the photos appear so often that they might well be iconic. Consider, for example, A5, B2, and D5. Photo E1 appears to be the same scene, but has a different tint and angle; Spassky's French flag is visible and Fischer's U.S. flag is not. Photos E5 and F6 are also the same. The match poster is seen in B7 and F2.

Several photos are not from 1992. Photo C4 is from the 1972 match, although it illustrates a game from 1992. Photo C6 is from a game played before 1972 (Siegen 1970, I think).

Photo D1 is about a moment from the opening press conference that is more famous than any of the games played in the match. It shows Fischer with the letter that led to the famous spit incident. I remember that my parents, who were not at all interested in chess, asked me about that incident. I answered that chess players were basically harmless. They weren't convinced.

Talkchess Talks Current Topics

The buzz in the chess world has been dominated for the last two weeks by the Carlsen/Nakamura vs. Niemann affair. Finding it impossible to ignore, I documented it in the post Chess Players Behaving Very, Very Badly (September 2022). Talkchess members discussed the technical possibilities for cheating in two related threads:-

• 2022-12-06: Carlsen withdrawal after loss to Niemann (talkchess.com; lkaufman) • 'I am posting here to ask those who are technologically knowledgeable how they would go about getting computer help in an event where the players are "wanded" for electronic devices, where spectators are barred (for Covid reasons), and where everyone is on camera during the games.'
• 2022-12-13: Chess Cheating Hackathon! (talkchess.com) • 'I wanted to see if anyone had ideas on how to best circumvent the present cheating protocols being used at the [Sinquefield] Cup at the moment.'

That first Talkchess thread was initiated by GM Larry Kaufman, who has appeared recently on this blog in two unrelated posts:-

• 2022-08-22: Interviews with Dragon's Developers • from Chessbase
• 2022-09-05: Chess324 Is a Thing

Another Talkchess thread pointed to a different Kaufman interview, apparently more recent than the one featured in the Chessbase video.

Interview with world-class expert, Larry Kaufman (44:12) • '[Published on] Sep 15, 2022'

The description said,

A warm, semi-technical interview covering an overview of chess engine development from 1960 to the present day. Larry goes on to describe Komodo Dragon's unique approach which can give a practical edge in human v human competitions!

The related YouTube channel, 'Carl Bicknell', has a few other videos related to chess engines. Unlike many engine enthusiasts, he's also a competent, expert level player.

World Champion Petrosian Chess 'School'

Chess is so popular in Armenia that the title of this photo, 'Chess School Yerevan', doesn't tell us much. Yerevan is the capital of Armenia.

The Chess School Yerevan © Flickr user mcfarlandmo under Creative Commons.

Thanks to Google I found a similar photo on Wikipedia's page Tigran Petrosian Chess House. The page starts,

Tigran Petrosian Chess House, officially the Central House of Chess-player named after Tigran Petrosian, is the center of the sport of chess in Yerevan, Armenia. It was opened in 1970. In 1984, it was renamed after the former world chess champion Tigran Petrosian.

The same photo is on another Wikipedia page Chess in Armenia. Since I've already referenced that page in Armenian Candidates (March 2016), specifically for 'Teaching of chess in schools', I'll stop here.