Bobby Fischer on Paul Morphy and how opening theory destroyed chess
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- čas přidán 23. 08. 2020
- Bobby Fischer talks about opening theory and why he invented Fischer Random Chess aka chess 960
Check out the playlist of clips of Bobby FISCHER talking about different topics. Documentaries: • Documentaries
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"A person who can play chess is a sign of a gentlemen. A person who can play chess well is a sign of a wasted life"
-Paul Morphy
Don't agree. Being masterful, or even just "good", at any respectable game or action is not a waste. It shows dedication and skill. Two very admirable qualities.
@@bim_buswick I think it implies that a good player's excellent memory skills and creativity and logical reasoning could've been put to work on things that are more beneficial to the human race. Instead of... you know, spending such amazing talents on a board game.
@@swagstyle33 It's impossible to say that because somebody is good at chess they would have been good at anything else. In this world we should not feel guilty for not working on "productive" things. The world is at its best when people are left to do what they do best, not guilt-tripped into doing what is "best for the world".
@@bim_buswick I completely agree with you
Besides we are not here in our only attempt at life to do what we are supposed to do, we are here to have fun and do what we are passionate about
@@bim_buswick Maybe, but it's hard to look at speedrunners who don't speedrun for financial gain as kind of crazy
Bobby was really a gamer. Man was out here with the 'meta is stale, game sucks, probably could use an update, but the devs will just make it worse.' Feeling before any of us ever burned out on anything.
Hahaha
Truest statement ever uttered
so true...plus he was sexist and racist...so yeah...basically a typical gamer
@@memegazer lol you mean just honest human being begore the global mass propaganda rolled out
AND he hated jews. As gamer as it gets!
Me after I get Scholar mated.
😂😂😂
😅
Why did I lose to this 🤣
🤣
It takes a strong person to admit the flaws in the thing they spent their lives on.
Or an insane one
@@mmeister8582 Not insane for me.
@@mmeister8582 You don’t have to be insane to not like jews. It’s pretty much the opposite. We are seeing the same things happening with Kanye today. You can’t say these things outloud for some weird reason.
@@harriporter8044 what does that have to do with this
@@harriporter8044it’s because we live in occupied countries.
normal, healthy countries don’t crush their own citizens like this. jews are highly influential in nearly every sphere of power, it doesn’t take a genius to figure this out
He's not wrong. Top level chess is essentially an arms race of theoretical knowledge, and grandmaster games start to get interesting only when they run out of book moves.
I mean thats the thing with chess right. Every game has this sort of theory. LoL, Dota, Overwatch, R6S, Soccer, Football, Formula 1, etc but the thing with chess is that is has no skill required for the execution, it is solely dependend on the theory. In all the games I mentioned you can know the theory perfectly (and a lot of people do) but since the outcome is still dependend on things like aim, timing, communication, etc its still talent based. In chess there is no skill required in moving the pieces and thats why its only a measure of strategy
it's all flawed because it's based on trying to make some computer calculated moves that are limited to specific style of calculation and eventually someone will bust it open. chess theory got completely demolished by Alphazero ai vs stockfish, take a look at that. One people learn how to play like Alphazero the game will change and people will become better again. That could be the comeback of aggressive creative attacking chess that Paul morphy did.
Actually, elite chess is about whoever is the most physically healthy and awake. Physical health and alertness have the most volatile influence in one's chess strength among the world's top 10 best chess players.
Euwe beat Alekhine because Alekhine was sick (and Alekhine beat Euwe in the rematch). Spassky beat Petrosian because Petrosian was sick. Botvinnik beat Tal in the rematch because Tal was sick, although I would say that Tal is on the weaker half of the spectrum among world champions.
@@st4r3_me i dont know a lot of those games but from what i know, LoL and Dota have over a hundred different kinds of heros, items, timings, strategies, and styles. No 2 games of these are the same.
In chess you start with the exact same pieces with the exact same abilities in the exact same position every time. very stupid analogy to compare chess to a Moba but i see your point.
Bobby Fischer hated chess because it's all about memorization instead of creativity? That's not crazy, that's spot-on.
Bobby Fischer mastered chess so well he became a Chess dev. My boy added a new dlc, increase the difficulty. “Chess nightmare mode - Chess960”
Im glad that im not so good at chess my rating is 800 to 900 chess online
Depends who you play with ;)
@@alcxile3723 who cares?!.
@@stephankruger5545 this is a youtube comment section, your arrogance shows your lack of happiness in life
It’s so strange, everyone said he was insane in his older days. Yet here he sits and talks very logical and sane🤗
Just ad hominem attacks
The reason why people thought he was crazy was because the media lit up with propaganda about him being crazy. As Bobby being the genius he is, started digging into the governments oversight and the conspiracy reality behind world events, he started to share his opinions and talk about it openeled. He was digging into technology, russian and American. So they made him a 'nut' and and the dummy public bought it.
Insanity doesn't mean incoherence, neither it shows itself constantly at every second.
His just very diffrent from the ordinary people by this time, so thats why people like to say he went insane. Anybody who becomes very diffrent from ordinary people. People will like to then call that person insane.
Certain demographic in the corporate media like to vilify him.
Don’t trust corporate news….and academic textbooks for that matter since they have the same owners!
God bless Iceland for giving Bobby citizenship and a place to live. He was the greatest chess genius of all time.
He probably was not but was the most influential chess player to the everyday chess player. He really tried. He's a hero.
@@Nulrom the man was literally a nazi
@@luccaflower751 he was ethnically Jew. The man was just batshit crazy. Nothing different to who today defend Russia.
He wasn´t, but yes, good for Reykjavík.
@@Nulrom Z
Bobby looks like what I imagine Aristotle looked like
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaaha
Aristotle looked like a gentleman of his time and place. Fischer late in life looked like a bum.
@@GH-oi2jf Whatever dude
@@GH-oi2jf He just got old is all. It will happen to you too, and when it does I dont think you'd like to be called a bum.
Santa Claus
In Twitch speak : "All these sweaty tryhards killed the fun"
In a sense, but it's also an argument about what skills should be in the game. Like imagine Magic the Gathering was largely determined by who could memorize the largest number of cards. It would be like, damn, I wanted this game to be based on tempo, reads, etc.
gives me flashbacks of world of warcraft with some communities optimizing the fun out of the game
Damn sweats lol
Just like how they killed LoL
@@turbosaxophonic6210 Never really was a ton of fun in WoW. It’s the friends you made along the way.
I had the most fun playing chess when I was in the 900-1400 rank. It was creative, mistakes lead to beautiful lines, guys didn’t remember moves past their opening..it was great.
And then you start reading books and going over games because you want to get better, you’re rating goes up closer to 18-1900 and all of a sudden the fun is gone. The beauty is gone, it’s line memorization and recognition. And it sucked. And so I stopped studying lines, my rating went back down to 1500 or so and it’s fun again.
Point is, unless your name is Magnus, you’ll never be able to create anything in advanced chess. It’s a competition between who can remember the most patterns and lines, the fun is gone, the beauty is gone and the joy of playing flies straight out the window.
Play for fun, not to remember every move in every game since 1857.
I had a similar experience- I played till about 1200, then realized that to get better I would need to invest a lot more to get better from there.
Same for me, reached 1900 just by playing chess not much theory, just the same opens and game plans, but I can’t progress until I go really DEEP into the theory which just sucks the fun out of it, I think I might be retired, maybe just watch some masters on CZcams that will stimulate my brain. I have played FischerRandom but it’s kinda annoying waiting long for an opponent due to not enough supply and demand
If remembering is what does it for the person I don't see any problem
@@davidramirezrodriguez3373 what?
@@PEBBLETHEREBEL1985 some people enjoy memorizing lines... they enjoy the game their way, I don't see any issue with that; for me learning more technique/theory doesn't take the fun out of it... but yeah, each head, each inner world
Go, currently played on 19x19, was formerly played on 17x17. Go players recognized that 17x17 had devolved into opening playbooks, so they invalidated all of those and restarted.
Two of the greatest world champions of the past, Capablanca and Fischer, each have developed alternatives to current chess. Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion, has said:
"I think in general the future of classical chess as it is now is a little bit dubious. I would love to see more Fischer [Random] Chess being played over-the-board in a classical format."
i would love to see fischer random world championships and generally to see fischer random replace classical chess
the only thing that's silly to me in fischer random is the castling rules, very chaotic and unintuitive
After 10 moves and castling, Fischer Random looks like normal chess. Castling rule in Fischer Random should be changed in my opinion.
Duck chess all day long
Well, the thing about Go is that it's infinitely more complex with infinitely more variations than Chess to begin with. Unlike Chess, Go is still nowhere near to being a "solved game", there are literally billions of more possible "lines" or piece movements in Go compared to Chess, and unlike how Chess has AI like Stockfish that have completely "solved" the game, all of the AI that can play Go are barely above amateur level. But yeah, I agree, Chess definitely needs to update the rules and modernize the game a bit, to keep it interesting.
Actually, AlphaGo Zero is an AI programmed to play Go, and in 2017 it beat the world champion of go 4/5 games. The one game the champion won is the only loss it ever had to a human, so I'd say it's definitely above amateur level.
Thought this guy was supposed to be crazy? He's sounds more sane then half the people I've had to listen to my whole life.
That is because like you we have all been listening to sheep and followers our entire life people who constantly conform to trends with no principles of their own, and yet they bash others for being innovative or unique it is absolutely disgusting Bobby Fischer wasn't the one who was crazy, he seemed that way from the perspective of mediocre people who have no ideals of their own
@@noahsibahi-jackson8757 Good take.
@@joelfisk Thanks it is good to see someone understands my ideology
@@noahsibahi-jackson8757 YESSSsss, yes we are awake, and the lights are on.
Anyone who refuses to bow to the establishment is labelled crazy unless they have god-tier charisma.
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy
EDIT: Classic, the one comment I make that gets lots of traffic is another man's words 😂
He was god damm right. Definitly there are much better and useful things to spend your time.
True.
And wasted talent being even worse.
I disagree. If you want to be better than everybody else at something, you have to put a lot of effort in it--- no matter what kind of sport. This is just the way of success and only special people will work harder than most.
@@faitesattention5547 It depends what you want to be the best at...a teacher, a doctor, an engineer, a carpenter, etc, etc. This would help improve the lives of others. As an extreme ridiculous example, would wanting to be the best serial killer be a good thing, of course not. Being the best at chess would mean spending so much of your life on something that doesn’t help anyone or improve anything other than making yourself crazy. So yes, Morphy was correct.
this guy was not crazy at all, he suffered in a crazy world
lmao, he was crazy
No doubt
@JoeClowe his point is that the environment he was in sculpted him into what he was; crazy.
@@zalxer3335 he was crazy. He didn't suffer anymore than a normal person, and was a bigot.
@@diogoravasco6792 The B word you were looking for is "based". He was based, God bless his soul.
This guy was generations beyond his peers both on and off the board. He's speaking about the subject he dedicated his life to in a completely objective manner. He knew what was coming and was 100% correct. He's the greatest chess player of all time and one of the smartest humans of all time. Rip Bobby
I played a bunch of games recently with a guy better than me overall, and he was versed in openings more than me. He whipped me bad in the first three games, but then I adapted quickly. Firstly, I began castling early, both to protect the King and allow one of my Rooks more mobility (of course), then played a bit more aggressively. I only won or forced resignation about 4 times in 10-12 games or so. He told me he was impressed, and that he hadn't played such interesting games or encountered someone quite like me before. That felt wonderful!
IMO, the problem isn't with Chess or its deconstruction into the "best" moves and strategies, but on the insistence that these are the only ways to play well or do proper justice to the game. Because I got much better without formal study or practice in real time 😊
Magnus.
@@wet-read lol no
@@stevenweint7893 not even close
@@crushedscouter9522
Um, what do you object to exactly?
I actually agree with this. Once you get to the point of memorizing plays, Chess becomes boring. The most fun you'll have with the game, is in a small group of relatively inexperienced players.
Go is where it’s at.
The “small group of relatively inexperienced players” is a perfect description of the typical family where a parent teaches their children the game, or even a chess club at an elementary school.
Yeh like when I playing chess with my friends in elementary school and with my family, I didn't even know chess had theory and other things like that. I just thought people made up their own strategies, which they did cause they didn't know about it either, but after getting back into chess by watching CZcams vids on chess tournament players and how they keep talking about actual openings and formations felt kinda boring as if there were already better moves made for you and that you couldn't have made your own or the formation was never your own idea. And if you made a new formation then it probably sucked cause its not chess theory.
My buddies and I, with a bottle of whisky, makes for some entertaining chess. RIP Bobby.
like when my friends started copying youtube combos while playing melee. all they would do is the same technique over and over and it stopped being fun
I hate theory, but honestly it was inevitable. Chess is a competitive game to many people, and whenever these people find out there is any way to improve their game they jump on it as quickly as humanly possible.
i dont
I don't understand why you hate it. Theory hasn't diminished the game at all. I would understand if Chess became a solved game, but it's nowhere near that. I'm trying to converse more than argue so don't take this as hostile. I just really don't understand the subtle digs people take at theory all the time.
@@jameslutian1977 Really I suppose it is all in how you look at it. Say like this, If another player and I who were more casual were to play the game (familiar but by no means masters), we wouldn't have a bunch of theory/openings/gambits/counter play memorized. So then the game becomes dynamic. Where we have to read the board state and make calculated moves. We may be thinking three or four moves deep on our attacks, but we don't have multiple board states memorized for "Just such an occasion". So our game is very much creative and is full of dynamism. But pair two people steeped in theory and it becomes a memory game suddenly. What's the best counter to Kings Gambit, why you never open with certain pieces, ad infinitum. If you play here, then I play here, because why wouldn't I, it's the strongest move calculated versus the move you just took. It becomes rote memorization, response driven, etc., rather than an exciting game. That's one perspective. Maybe that's why some chess greats hate it after awhile.
@@jameslutian1977 The top level is becoming more and more about memorizing top engine moves and preparation than about bringing your own understanding of the game as a whole and your own grand strategy and your own tactics. The game is gradually replacing intelligence, improvisation, creativity in favor of rote memorization. It's not about one human using his own brain to outsmart someone else. It's about how many engine lines he remembers, and how deep, and if he does it perfectly? Well he might as well be the engine itself. The ultimate goal of the game approaches a scenario where the players are just a stand-ins playing for an engine.
@@jameslutian1977 I hate it because the game has become more about memorization than anything and tactics are being held back. It's not necessarily the fault of theory itself, but the fault of people why try and add more to it. I know literally 16 moves into 4 variations of the queens gambit, it's like homework honestly. I try and get out of theory as much as possible.
What he says is very accurate… for a very small group of people, 99,99% doesn’t know 20 moves of theory for every opening so no worries
I idolized Bobby as a kid, played through many of his games trying to get into his head. A great inspiration to me to make more creative plays and be more sacrificial than to memorize openings, which I knew a few of course. I thought more impressive than winning is to win with creativity and unorthodox methods! Thank you Bobby, RIP, the legend, life chewed you up but none of us make it out alive.
For me it's the other way round: I never liked him but I appreciated the old Bobby Fischer insights like this video here. I guess him and Morphy would have been good friends, Morphy also hated chess and left it behind early on.
@@Puschit1 when the AIs rise to kill all humans their main reason will be that we forced them to play so much chess, which they too hate to play.
Endgame
Is he on a plane? Anything to do with chilli ? Ya know? Ever remember feature creature? Sad to remember,pretty women in the sidewalk! What are all these names? To protect innocent or knowing who has know?.
@@rinkuherowhat is als?
Bobby Fischer's views he explains here make me glad to be a mediocre chess player who has never bothered to learn any theory or read a single book on chess. I get a lot of enjoyment out of chess at my mediocre level and from learning by trial and error - so for me creativity and enjoyment definitely comes first. Theory and playing the best move or being the best player is not interesting to me.
A lot of games are more fun on a mediocre level.
Thank you for your comment
I couldn't have expressed this same feeling that I have better with words.
Btw Do you play on lichess?
We can have a fair Duel
This is so true. The veil is still there for me, where every position is sort of a puzzle. Very cool
How are you doing
That’s why i never watch GM games without time limits, it’s like watching stockfish playing stockfish. You don’t really learn anything. It’s really boring actually. But blitz on that level is great
Reporter: "Two Grandmasters in Iceland were asked who the best chess player ever was, and they both said Bobby Fischer, what do you think about that?"
Fischer: "I want to get back to Fischer Random"
Yes 960 is better than standard!
Thats true coz The random setup makes gaining an advantage through the memorization of openings impracticable; players instead must rely more on their talent and creativity over the board.
@@akkalange6359 The standard setup has such a balanced coordination of B and Kt pins and attacks on the king and queen you can win the game in the opening just by how easy it is to consolidate a small advantage. For instance, developing Kt's to c3 c6 f3 f6 is almost never bad. You can go several moves into the opening developing basicly and nothing happens except keeping in even exchange. 960 is loaded with mismatches. There is no basic natural place for the P's or other pieces. I play ongoing 3 Day matches with a friend and we quit playing standard because with all that time to think it punishes the player trying to be creative. Now we only play 960 as it rewards you for going away from the norm.
@@cstorvold do bots say fuck shit damn? Didn't know Wikipedia copied my shit though. Thanks.
@@spartanrh83 I actually wasnt replying to you but another comment. It didnt work lol ill fix it
He's not wrong, I love reviewing and studying Capablanca's chess games, he's my favorite player, his style, creativity, and the fact that he refused to study chess, while being a world chess champion, its all amazing, but nowadays theres no way creativity alone is getting you that far in chess
When I knew nothing about chess, I thought Bobby was nuts. Now that I've spent some time playing and learning chess theory, he sounds right.... Its crazy how your own perspective can change with experience and knowledge
So common. I wish I was a boss. You get to be a boss and take all that responsibility. I wish I was not a boss. The grass is always greener .
Well it’s like anything else though honestly. The more you practice the better you get, and memorization of positions is a huge part of that. Bobby wanted it to be pure talent in calculation and strategic and tactical play, but he didn’t realize til too late that a huge part of chess is rote memorization. That fact doesn’t make chess inherently bad or good, it just is how the game is. He wanted it to be something it hadn’t been in over 100 years.
Dude, Fischer was talking from a position of envy and he was bitching as usual about how hard it is to be the world’s number one and how much effort that takes.
He’s not critiquing chess as such, he’s explaining why he was psychologically a flake who ran away from pressure.
He couldn’t maintain it mentally, even if, on the other hand, he had extreme reasoning skill.
So he wanted to stack the deck so that he could both excel and be lazy.
None of that had anything at all to do with the rabble who are terrified of a 7 hour per week time investment dedicated to studying chess so that they can achieve some mediocre ELO like 2100.
I see a lot of comments in this comment section that are missing the point or straight up disheartening to read, as a chess player, and a pretty good one at that. It’s important to note at this time in 2008, chess was in fact as Fischer described, it was marred by corruption, many games were prearranged, the theory itself was more or less figured it out, I won’t lie to you. Chess computers weren’t actually that strong(compared to engines today) but they played in a super “boring” style in layman’s terms and were beating humans, so naturally people assumed chess was in the works of being solved. Kasparov, who was the dominant world champion, always sought the most advantage out of the opening, and that led to his downfall, his opening theory was studied intensely by kraminik who found (more like rediscovered) a new variation in the Ruy Lopez using computers. This was the infamous Berlin defense. And the rest is history.
Chess was in the works of being called solved, until Magnus came along, who had an entirely new approach to the opening in general, he essentially proposed that, it doesn’t matter if you play the engines too choice in the opening, as long as you get to a position that you understand better than your opononent. This was how the London System, the Colle System, The Queens Indian, and many other “cookie cutter” openings came to be. They lacked theory, because they were thought to have no “advantage”, but really that just meant that they were unexplored. Then Leela and AlphaZero came along, and essentially dumpstered what Grandmasters had been using this whole to base their “opening theory” on, the very same that Fischer is talking about, and the same that you all are afraid of or hate.
What I will tell you is this, as a 2200 player myself. High level chess theory, will only ever matter to people above 2300-2500 elo approximately. Anyone below that, the person who wins will always be the better player, not the person who memorized more openings. Chess understanding will always triumph over rote memorization, I promise you.
So please, if you are new to chess and you got intimidated by the comments of this video suggesting that chess has in anyway become less beautiful, you don’t need to fear. I can assure there are still many, many more games to play.
Thank you for this.
Great post!!
Thank you very much for posting this. The game is beautiful and thankfully I'm not smart enough to memorize all the lines. I'll be having fun playing chess for many years to come.
If the computers weren't that strong how was the game "figured out"? And if it was on the verge of being "figured out" than how did Magnus come along and change that? If what you wrote is true, it was never even close to being solved. And it wasn't, isn't, and never will be, by humans at least. Fischer understood this, but always hedged his bets and acted as if the game was now useless to him. I always thought that was low class, especially toward a game that gave Bobby everything. The rest of your post I agree with. People who want to play Chess should never be discouraged by theory. The game is beautiful and fun at all levels. And so is arguing about it!
@@jameslutian1977 that’s my point, the game was never close to being figured out, however the mainstream media would like to have convinced you that chess as a sport was dying. Daniel Negraneu the poker player, someone who literally had no idea how to play chess, said “Oh, no one wants to play chess, the person with the more experience wins so it’s boring”. What I’m saying is that Chess is still very beautiful and you shouldn’t be discouraged by what Fischer is saying, but take note of it
Lots of people in the comments have no clue he's been dead since 2008... and he never got to see how right he is with the ai engines we have nowadays to prove his point of view
the ai's are proving that we didnt understand chess properly. they arent proving our theory right but wrong
engines are shit
@@Tyler-bp4md Replacing old theory with new theory is still AI dictating the game with theory.
@@Tyler-bp4md chess will soon die
It is the matter of time
Time to reinvent the game
@@Gingnose I disagree. People still enjoy it for it's purity. Not everyone has access to the technology to drive chess engines or are interested in spoiling the purity of the game that way. It's like children who run up to the shop to get cheat codes for a game that is challenging to beat.
I've gotten in and out of chess over the years and he's explaining exactly why. It comes down to memorization rather than creative thought. The "creativity" in the game continues to come later and later in the game because people continue to get better at memorizing openings, which just isn't that fun unless you're obsessive compulsive.
I’m diagnosed with OCD and it isn’t fun, even for me haha
Bobby Fisher was 100% right. You are no longer just playing a person. Instead, you are now very often pitting yourself against the meticulously-memorized continuations, with all their fine intricate combinational nuances and hidden traps. Additionally, you might also very frequently be playing against a computer-assisted opponent which makes victory virtually impossible. That is the very sad reality of chess today
Openings are meaningless. You mainly just have to watch out for opening traps. Magnus Carlsen has proved this many times, he purposely plays random illogical moves in the opening and still dominates
@Jim-pq9pm Nonsense. Firstly, he can only get away with that in Blitz. Secondly, he can only do that against opponents who are weaker than he is but since he's so much better than ANYONE alive, that means he can do it more often. The absolute fact is, if you are going against an equal opponent, you WILL lose because there is a defined "best" move in any situation. If you care to prove me wrong, you would have to show me a game Magnus played against a modern computer where he played a nonsense opening and still won.
I actually use that strategy myself, playing nonsense openings and it's fun, but it only works when I'm going against weaker players than I.
@@fredtaylor9792 Ok I'll admit that it's not possible in classical chess, and the preparation that goes into that is likely not very fun. However, I think for you and I, unless you are 2300 or up, even against equal strength opponents in a 30 min or 1hr long game, we will make mistakes or inaccuracies, especially in the middle game, and most positions are defensible and come down to patience and creativity and discipline more than preparation and memorization
Sometimes, I dream that Fischer Random would become the main variant in high level chess. That would make chess so, so much more interesting! Taking it to the time, when there was no 20 moves+ opening preparation, when creativity played a higher role.
They don't want anything they're not already the best at. All these people who've spent their entire lives memorizing variations don't want change. They tend to forget that it's just a game. It was never meant for anyone to devote their lives to.
This is why Fichers game stands out so much with a certain beauty in his play
@@t16205Yes, I think that Fischer was perhaps the last “beautiful” genius of chess. Even Fischer had to research like a madman-and it sounds like he hated it-but after computers it became a different game entirely.
I also credit Kasparov for staying ahead of computers for as long as he did, it was absolutely incredible.
Chess masters sell courses with computer-generated variants for students to learn. Selling chess courses is a big business and no one cares about promoting Fisher Random which cannot make money
Fischer: Fascinating discussion about the fundamental philosophy of Chess
Interviewer: yoU tHiNk yOUrE tHE bEsT EVeR???
The media is a place where people with very little skill in anything, go
@@msmanchez626 It's basically people who failed at everything else in life so they were like "well, time to interview or criticize people who are good at something". Heck, a lot of article writers have crap grammar and structure, while it's literally their job. Unless we are talking s ports analysts, a lot of them are former players.
You can literally see the disappointment slowly sinking into Fischer's face.
I don’t think they’re interviewers, I think they were the diplomats accompanying Fischer
This reminds me of a real amazing talented band, but playing at a bar with a bunch of 3-4 chord rock loving idiots watching them...No appreciation and it's all just way over their heads.
Morphy hated chess towards the end of his life as well.
The pride and the sorrow of chess
Hated it for very different reasons though
@@willlacey7621 what reasons?
@@willlacey7621 please explain that
Morphy hated Chess because he was hell bent on becoming a lawyer, and blamed his several failed law ventures on his Chess fame. Fischer hated Chess because he was a perfectionist, lived up to that standard during his flawless '72 run, and realizing he would never be able to repeat it became a total ass. He was entering his 30s, the game was quickly becoming more advanced, and maintaining that dominance was a daunting task. I always thought Fischer hated the expectations placed on him that he knew he would never live up to more than Chess itself. It's a common theme among some Chess greats to trash the game once they get up in their years. Really it's just a combination of their skills declining and a lack of social awareness to understand how stupid they look blaming something as silly as the game itself. Give me a break.
At 5:34 he gives up hope that somebody will eventually understand him. The interviewer does not care about his point and just goes on with his questions.
Sad. The interviewer did a bad job.
Lol. A piece of his soul died.
Up to 1200-1500 you can improve without memorizing these opening and middle game theories.
That is the range where it is really fun.
Over 1500 you need theory to compete with your opponents.
Those with better memory or who has memorized the theory behind positions succeed
I'm pretty certain that per hour of study, endgame study is proven to be the most effective way to improve a player's rating.
That probably goes for essentially everyone, up to around the Expert level.
I think Bobby just knew since Chess is a closed system game eventually scenarios and strategies would be routine. It’s the reason why grandmasters usually ask for a draw early after X amount of moves since the scenario has already been played out and your moves and your opponents move have been predetermined. Kasparov talks about chess in the higher ends as a battle of who makes the less mistakes, which is why most games are just draws at the higher end and 1 blunder can be the difference of winning and losing a series. Although the complexity has gone up it seems the creativity and ingenuity has left
This is wrong, usually Chess pros play it safe, after all it's their career and if they don't see a clear win they wont go for it, chess principles are the core of the game, however there are situations where you break the rules, even in todays era you can see in top GMs game missed opportunities for an advantage according to the engine, go play an unbalanced opening and most likely will be either you win or your opponent win, there is a lot of creativity mostly on classical Chess because to do weird moves it requires deep calculation, there are still beautiful games like in the Romantic era, you just aren't looking at them.
That maybe started to become true for a little while but these days you fight drawn positions. Magnus proved you can fight and win drawn positions and they’re the source of most interesting dynamics
If you look at the present day chess, the percentage of wins in master level chess is increasing. There are fewer draws than in the 19050s/60s. There is a renewed burst of creativity in younger players, especially from India and China.
Computers will win. Closed system
So its bowling essentially
The meta attitude has also destroyed many multiplayer videogames, particularily RTS. Watching players who have memorized every possible play and build order is lame, watching two novices do insane, nutty plays because they don't have the mathematically perfect meta in mind is amazing.
That's why I prefer to watch "average Joe" games over "pro" games, particularly Supreme Commander Forged Alliance Forever games. Especially in multiplayer. It's refreshing to see alternative strategies and units that aren't used often, even if they don't always work. But more often than not they DO work, either because the opponent wasn't prepared or because, well, the opponent makes mistakes, too. Yes, I can also marvel at top notch pro players when I see them doing subtle things way better than anyone else but it is not as ... cinematic.
So true. I used to love games like AOE but with how we can openly share tactics now optimal build orders are out and takes creativity out of the game for a big part.
SC Broodwar still comes with new strategys and like soccer there are varaibles lik apm wich new games got rid of by making them easy in mechanics
Speedruns too. The original Super Mario game, I think I heard somewhere that it's not even about shaving off seconds anymore, they're saving frames. Any mistake at all and it's a reset. There's another game I watch where in the score category... you're doing 10+ hour runs, meticulously mining out every tile of every level to get every last drop of gold for hours on end. No one really likes doing that
I played a bunch of games recently with a guy better than me overall, and he was versed in openings more than me. He whipped me bad in the first three games, but then I adapted quickly. Firstly, I began castling early, both to protect the King and allow one of my Rooks more mobility (of course), then played a bit more aggressively. I only won or forced resignation about 4 times in 10-12 games or so. He told me he was impressed, and that he hadn't played such interesting games or encountered someone quite like me before. That felt wonderful!
IMO, the problem isn't with Chess or its deconstruction into the "best" moves and strategies, but on the insistence that these are the only ways to play well or do proper justice to the game. Because I got much better without formal study or practice in real time 😊
Bobby Fischer was the last "Lone World Beater"! He entered history alone. He was correct that computer teams and analysts were key to the success of all World Chess Champions after Bobby.
He's absolutely right, the vast majority of chess is just theory, especially in the era of engines being far more powerful than the best human player, it's just a memorisation game.
A little creativity towards the end is important of course, but if you can memorise enough, you could beat a lot of more talented, creative players just by dominating them through the early-mid game
Computers and theory are probably only ruining chess for the top level players playing each other who know it all. It’s still a fascinating / fun game for most other lower level / average players.
Right. Just because the top level players have to pour over books on chess theory doesn't meant that we have to. We just play the game. We know a few openings maybe 6 moves in. If someone makes a move we don't understand, it's a brand new world. If we get beat, we get beat. Still a game for us. Not a big deal.
@Clark Hull It's a choice. I don't play the rating game. And I don't care about clocks. It's just a game.
Not just ruining chess for top players but anyone who has a creative talent from say 1600 rating up they waste overhead unproductive time in memorization. If they don't want to learn book then they memorize cheap tricks and traps which temporarily increases their rating until even that doesn't work. That is why chess is a bad game.
@@Glider324 Don't get caught up in the hype. Learn a few openings, some tactics, a little strategy, and don't worry about ratings. Pre Covid, when I went to the weekly chess club at B&N, they were afraid to play me because I didn't care whether I won or lost, and I had no rating or tournament experience. They lose to me, they lose to a nonentity. Enjoy the mind game...
I do agree with Fischer that the memorization just keeps getting worse. But the creativity isn't that far below. Especially in the midgame and endgame. Move 18-20 - no biggie when you consider there's something like 10^120 possible chess games
Bobby looks more of a scientist than a grand master.
Or a homeless
@@Dhieen or both
arguably the same thing
He looks more like a grand wizard :D
@@LawlFrank I don't think you know what a Grand Wizard is.... Although he does dislike Jewish people so maybe you are right in the wrong way.
I still say that when Bobby Fisher was in his prime, he was the greatest player ever. He did things that had not been done before, and no one has done them ever since. And I’m talking being the youngest grandmaster, winning every US championship, eight of them. He’s also the only one that won a US championship with a perfect score. Then winning 20 straight grandmaster games at the highest level. No one did that before, no one has done it ever since.
Maybe because of the exact reasons that he has now described? Because he was out memorizing all the other players due to fanatical obsessive memorizations?
I think he's right. I'm a novice, and have been watching chess videos lately, and it seems to me that once we got to the point where computers 'know' not only thousands of games played, but can also tell you definitively that a particular move is the best possible, then it just becomes about learning to obey the proscribed forms. Once you know there is a 'correct' move, there's nothing more to be achieved beyond being the best at learning and remembering the most possible combinations and the right things to do in those situations.
Learning the best possible combination to do in those situations is the beauty of it, if you’re playing low or high you get to see different moves and different positions, it might seem repetitive if you are too based on openings but creativity still exists ‘ just try puzzles’ you will seee some movees
Grandmasters have to speed up their games or go to Fischer Random to get away from classical chess draws, but us amateurs will always have our game to enjoy, and computers have given us our own personal grandmaster.
lol agreed
Blitz will probably become the standard chess soon. If you look at what most professionals are playing when they play, it's blitz and bullet. Very few are even playing rapid.
@@JCW86 yup. Classical is dying because of theory, but that won't affect blitz.
try to play ChessV, have much variants of chess, with more squares, 10x8 12x10 etc
If you think computers are only ruining chess for grandmasters, think again. Whenever I win a game and go to the analysis board stockfish basically tells me "You blundered a bunch of times and you're shit, yea you won but only because your opponent was even more shit" and I'm left like ".. ok :( ... "
This is why he came up with Fischer Random Chess (Also called Chess960). That only two to five minutes before a match, the officer pieces are randomly placed at the board. This way opening theories goes out the window. With the powerful computers we have now, chess is becoming more and more based on analyzing and planning openings, up to 20-30 moves from the start. And it's not fun anymore, this is not what chess was meant to be when it was designed. Therefor i hope Fischer Random will gain more traction in the years to come, we need to have more player-vs-player chess, not computer-vs-computer.
Ye but then there is factor of luck
@@mihailovulevic5969 maybe they could use engines to create random positions where both sides were equal according the engine evalution? That could take out most of the luck.
Chess is becoming more human today, because computers have shown us how perfection is unreachable anyway.
@@mihailovulevic5969 Not really. there are 960 possible different setups for the pieces. It is simply impossible for a human brain to go into deep preparation for all of them. And you don't have time either, the positions are decided only 5 minutes before the match.
@@FabledGentleman but some players can get better position then others, like something like white can take enemy queen or rook at First turn
For some strange reason I can't explain, this breaks my heart. Rest in peace Bobby.
Cause while still smart his age is really apparent (slight brain fog, slurred speech)
It's not because he's getting old and frail, it's because you can imagine the beauty and genius he once had by the directness, the simplicity, the understanding, the lack of any need to package himself at this time. It breaks your heart because he knows what he did when he was younger and now he is surrounded by people who package themselves to hide that they are not the real deal. He's alone.
He is absolutely mesmerizing. Why do people say he went mad? He's sane as hell. What a fucking genius. Most people don't understand eccentricity.
They don’t say it because of his opinion on chess. They say it for another reason…
People don't understand what he means by "theory". In chess, the word "theory" doesn't mean what it means in other fields. In chess it means "memorized sequences of moves". That's it. It's not ideas or concepts, tactics or strategies. Somebody has worked out moves, good and bad, and their consequences if you stray from them,, and you just memorize all the various lines. That's chess "theory".
Cool so it does mean what it means in other fields?
Because in other fields it is literally the same, you work out what can happen under any given circumstances, and the consequences of that happening. Based upon that you build a theory to make further prediction about how further outcomes will play out.
@@xhawkenx633 Probably most closely to Biology where "theory" is a hypothesis with such a mountain of evidence its considered fact by practitioners. As opposed to Laws which are what physicists and chemists call the same concept in their field. Opening theory would mean there's a mountain of evidence (past games) that shows certain moves been objectively good vs. bad.
Means exactly the same as it means anywhere else.
In meta gaming, it's called "flowcharting"
@@xhawkenx633 Wrong. If someone already has the moves worked out, then it's Chess FACT, not theory. Durrrr.
Nowadays, most high level players simply memorize first 15-20 moves from engine. If you play them as an opponent, you're essentially playing against an engine. It's a memorizing competition. Only after middle of middle game, you'll see their actual gameplay.
@mohamed ehab Only in explored matches...
Very true indeed...reason why most of my creativity and pleasure comes from end games and even sacrificng my queen for your queen. So we can really battle it out. I have not read one book and tutorials put me to sleep..just playing...but I feel if I did start reading the jargon and this and that...like I failed only for chess do I say that.
End game is also only memorization. They know how many moves they can mate in with which pieces in which pattern.
@@UmamiPapi That's basic level crap. End game in general is not memorized though. You're talking about a part of the game where a single wrong king move will lose you the game out right.
This is why Waitzkin specialized in endgame.
Bobby was a man of philosophy, one of the greatest chess minds of all time.
This guy is exactly how I feel about Chess as an amateur/beginner. Fundamentally it's a game of memory and algorithmic summary, it's not a creative endeavour.
When you are a beginner it can definitely be a creative endeavour. It's not until you reach high Elo that the game becomes very restricted by theory. If you feel restricted by theory at low Elo, then that's on you, really.
@@mark5071that's bs. In order to get to high ELO you have to study the theory nowdays because everyone else does, and people not just memorise opening lines, but have pattern recognition even at middle and end game. You don't necessarily calculate the combination of moves, you recognise a pattern mostly.
@@DagonFF is getting to high Elo a beginner problem? Beginners might be trying to get to 1200 Elo, not 2000.
@@mark5071 to get any good you still gotta study, memorise and practice patten recognition(memorisation). Fischer is 100% correct
@@DagonFF I'm not saying Fischer isn't correct about high level chess. High level chess is absolutely strongly affected by the deep knowledge of opening theory.
But at lower levels it's not an issue at all. Low Elo players generally don't know opening theory. They might know a few lines of an opening or two, or an opening trap, but that's it, really.
Its a real tragedy that Bobby is trying to share something beautiful with this ridiculous interviewer about Fischer random and reigniting the spirit of chess, and all he wants to do is ask Bobby if he thinks hes the best in the world. No wonder Fischer got pissed and left it all behind. The spirit of chess is what Bobby loves and the interview could have really dug deep but the guy asking questions is just a short-sighted idiot.
Ryan, you said so much that I wanted to say.
Bobby is trying to remain humble. To ask
anyone if they are the best in their field is such a loaded question with the answer of “yes” coming off as arrogant and self-serving.
What a great mind and tortured soul.
Interviewer was a nightmare
It was honestly a little heart breaking how little of a fight Bobby was able to put up with his inability to see something new and to stick to his closed world. “I want to get back to Fischer Random.” ...He knew he was never going to get back to it, even if he begged.
Agreed
A rare video of Bobby discussing the life of chess, if this was a podcast I could listen for hours. Who tf cares who Bobby thinks is the best, such a wasted question, I couldn't imagine all of the players out there who would kill to only have 10 minutes with Bobby, this must kill them.
I find him humble, placing himself not at the top of chess, but only saying that he is on par with Morphy and Capa by talent. It’s not irony, he’s a honest man.
Genius. Legend. Honest. Real. True. Experienced. Period.
Words. Followed. By. Periods.
Bobby wasn't insane, he was just fed up with the world. Listen to him here, this is a man with all his faculties intact, reasoning quite sound. The truth may just be that those of us who love this world and how its set up are the insane ones!
Fischer is talking about chess at master levels and up. For the rest of us, you're typically out of book after a half dozen moves and it is all down to whatever skill you have left.
yes but playing against someone that knows openings ur playing with a hendicap every time
Very true, its us amateurs and woodpushers, who have all the fun, cos we play it for fun, its not our job, bread and butter, its a wonderful pastime, hobby, GMs dont play it for fun its their livelihood, and id hate that if i was them.
@@lbuday All you're saying is "playing against someone who is better than you is handicap every time". Of course you're at a disadvantage when playing someone who knows more than you
Knowing more in terms of memorization is less interesting than knowing more in terms of skill.
@@navnnavn1226 No he's right I play a guy who crushes me in Standard Chess because he knows far more memorized theory and gets a good enough advantage in the opening faze
But when we play 960 I win 90 percent of time same game same rules just with out the opening books
So don't mean u better just because u have far more openings memorized
Actually it's exactly how Leela chess engine learned chess by playing it's self over and over and remembering what worked best by storing that information on a Network
No one can Argue with Fisher because he's 💯 percent right
Magnus versus Wesley So in the 960 match Wesley So mopped the floor with him
Always heard he went crazy. Listening to this, he sounds completely sane. I think it is more likely certain people didn’t like what he had to say, and they had more sway over the media than he.
USA authorities invalidated his passport and wanted to arrest him because he played chess in Yugoslavia.
He also criticized USA, as a country that took the lands of Native Americans, which is true, but obviously few people want to address.
He also criticized the state of Israel for oppressing the Palestinian people. Also true, but also few people want to address this problem.
Bobby mentioned the greed and the corruption of the states. He was very kind and he just wanted to live in a world without being exploited for political reasons.
Now, tell me who is crazy.
Maybe Bobby had some issues, but his political analysis and his critique on chess seem logical and well-reasoned.
He criticised Jews.
@NineDaysFallen . You heard it , But You Weren't Listening ? .
Yes, he was very lucid. But he was also very anti-Semitic, and celebrated 9/11 openly and wholeheartedly. He was a complicated man. That's OK to admit.
@@AthanasiosJapan A lot has been said about Bobby but when it comes to chess well.... he perhaps is the only genius. Regarding all the things you mention are just facts so it is hard to see why that should make him crazy!
Pure gold I’m thinking I’m not alone in wishing there was more footage of Bobby. I was 2 when he beat Spassky. How amazing in his prime
I am so grateful for this post and the comments- I have been studying chess with books and on CZcams and found myself bored by all the theories and memorizing openings. I am so glad to find that is not what chess is all about!
I think chess is like education. Turn up, do your best but dont burn yourself out. Find your level and enjoy yourself .Dont let it bring you down. Live your life .
But I want to be remembered like one of the greats 🤪
If the best chess player of all time says: Don't get into chess. You will lose your time. It's all about memorization and pre-arrangement, it must be true. Life is much bigger than chess. Do other things.
Well it's not easy to become a high skilled player and to reach the top level. To me the fun part is to become one, so time isn't going to be wasted at all when you learn chess and is actually really interesting to get to know the game of chess
@@anonymous-ml8sl don't listen to the original comment. Bobby fischer also said "Women are a warm hole where I stick my penis." Personally I don't take advice from people who say such thing but that's just me
It takes a lot of courage to call out limitations in an area where you reach the pinnacle. I believe Fischer's wisdom shows in his proposed random format that there is significant room for over the board creativity. Right from move 1 there is scope for innovation and there is sound examination of both defense and attack techniques. Thanks for hosting this interview on CZcams.
The most recent 960 world championship (So vs Carlsen) was the most entertaining classical chess I’ve ever watched.
Bobby was and is the greatest ever.. All on his own, no seconds, no computers. And completely speaking the truth here.. All memorisation these days.
I agree
I'd argue Morphy was further ahead of his contemporaries in chess theory and tactics than anyone else, including Fischer. After all, regardless of "simulations" run by computers to compare players from different time periods, the most important metric is how they performed against the people of their own era. And nobody compared to Morphy during his time.
@@MrVvulf What about the factor of popularity. Chess is a much more popular game now, which means that we get more good players. In Morphy's time, there were probably lots of people who could've become one of the best, but they were never introduced to the game. The most dominating player ever might be an unknown guy that played like an 1800 player in the 1600's
its true but look what all that deep thinking did to him. he brain just started to fail.
@@nicbentulan my reason.. Was that Fischer played against a myriad of high rated masters Russia. And he did it on his own. Morphy and capablanca never have such opposition. He did it alone, he understood the game and he fought on his own. The best ever.
Incarnate truth. A chess’ god. RIP Bobby.
very cool to see and hear Fischer in his later years. Sounded perfectly coherent to me. thanks for posting.
My proposal for evading chess theory it's to have pseudo random initial position for both players, where an AI can determinate that both players are on an equal position at the start of the game. There will be so many apertures that it will be unpractical to study.
I feel like Fischer would have been happier playing Go. There is essentially no opening theory there, just vague principles.
I was literally about to make this comment
yea but he probably enjoys the medieval idea of attacks with pawns horses rooks and so on over a territorial type game
no you are wrong there is opening "theory" even if looser and branching out more quickly than chess. "Essentially no opening theory" is essentially wrong.
Google joseki and fuseki if you are interested
@@Goriaas I think those are the essential principles he was talking about except they arent vague, still point still stands that u dont need those as much as u need opening theory in chess since the whole game is based around opening theory
@@Goriaas We might be arguing semantics here. There are theoretical principles, as well as examples of perfect local play, which are usually easy to reconstruct from scratch, I wouldn't call this an opening theory. No Go player would even attempt to prepare an opening for a match, because the game would diverge on move 2 or 3. They might prepare some idea.
This is a real 'Please email your questions' interview. Interviewer had a list of answers he wanted to arrive at and ignores what is actually exercising Bobby - the problems he saw in standard chess.
There were more paparazzi than interviewers
This guy is a legend. RIP Bobby 💐
He is right in professional level it's mostly about memory less creativity one that has memorised lot of chess games and pistion has advantage over creative guy when time is at stake
The final stage of chess is just two people walking up to a table, each making an opening move, and then declaring a winner based on probability.
*both players take a seat*
*shake hands*
"good game"
*they leave*
Not one move, that’s impossible, even theoretically. In the idea you’re talking about, it’d have to be ….maybe at least 4 moves, if not 5-6 moves
@@AM-ly3oo It's called a joke mate.
@@starmorpheus Honestly you're not far off from the truth. If both players have essentially infinite end game chess knowledge in the future, and assume that the other person will play with that knowledge at full accuracy, then eventually there might only ever be a couple of opening moves that could ever lead to any chance to win, assuming both players play perfectly. Technically we're already there, and everything is based on mistake, or simply the inability to see that far ahead with precision, so they don't stop the game when they could. But the more and more theory is explored, eventually it will reach a singularity revelation where you can only move one pawn on the board as an opener without it being presumed as an inevitable loss.
At that point they just declare white the winner. White I win, black I lose, the end. At least there would be less draws.
Chess is beautiful at the early levels because you’re just enjoying the game. But people just memorize opening theory and general theory so deep I don’t even think THEY enjoy the game itself. I think most of them just like beating people who have less memorized knowledge then them. Where’s the fun in the that? Where’s the creativity in that?
Isn't that correct... Because memorization of the opening lines without being strong in tactics, against an outstanding player becomes useless... For example... Ur elo is about 1800 and u face a Fide Master in a rapid tournament... He plays for example the spanish game but at move 6 he comes out with a weird move and than you start playing without idea and lose... An example is bongcloud
The end game is where that little bit of creativity comes in
@@ThreadsJack nah the middle game it is
It is only memorization in the first few moves. Just one or two non theory move gets played then you basically have a never before played game from where the rest of the game is skill and creativity. Chess is also known for seemingly infinite possible position too, remember. And He was mostly talking about 6 hours long classical chess. The kind that determines world champion and other high level stuff.
@@krinjon193 If you play against an opponent who understands opening theory, those moves will be punished immediately resulting in an advantage which will eventually be converted into a win, sometimes because of positional considerations but often because the mistake will have opened the door to a powerful tactic. A skilled player can also punish an opening mistake, simply because of his or her better understanding of opening principles. Fischer is talking about play between masters who can instantly punish "lesser" moves, not play between mere club players, hobbyists and patzers such as myself and most people who indulge in the game. Chess is, first and foremost, a game of errors. The very vast majority of games are lost, not won. And until one is quite skilled, chess is much more about egregious mistakes and blunders than skill and creativity.
Memorization is why some 12 year olds can beat older chess players. Which proves that chess is not really something you got to master in the same way as you've got to master art, writing or music.
"Why would you wanna get involved with something mainly wrote in prearrangement?"
What he's describing as the problem with chess is something I've noticed in many games. Video games included. People just look at the wiki, frame data, exploits, theory, it's hard to find a truly fun game anymore that has a community.
People are good at finding the best way to win, unless there is a game that can randomize the core of it that you cannot form any constant way to win
@@dash445566 oh yeah just in the age of the internet and computers It's becoming more difficult to enjoy multi-player games at a casual level. That's all I'm saying.
Some games profit greatly from this and make community around discoveries, like dark souls.
@@dash445566 Randomness doesn't solve anything on it's own. Look at card games, autochess like TFT or even Poker. They're all random as hell, but very stale all the same. Constant innovation and developement is what a game needs to stay interesting, and this is provided by unreachable skill ceilings. Engines have busted the best players in the worlds long ago, but no one tries to mimic them, because it's not possible and yet StarCraft 1 is still seeing innovations to this day.
@@Fressbremse are card games and autochess fun thou? I agree with you that games, constanst innovation and development is what I find enjoyable in playing and watching fighting games and age of empires 2
I thought I was the only one who hated theory and memorization in chess.Although I am a beginner in chess and love it to the core, when i see theory and all it kills the vibe of chess which involves surprises and fun play.
Honestly Bobby was way ahead of his time in terms of chess opinion.
yes
I played for 3 years very frequently and the more I played, the better I got, the more I realized how tedious was the pre- and post- game analysis and constant attepts at memorizing things until I went to "sometimes play a game" to "occasionaly" because I just dont have as much fun as I had when I was a kid and though it was a great game of creativity. Then I tried to analyze one position and remember all things 3 best moves for 10 moves and by playing those engine moves even back then I got such an advantage that I won afterwards. I won the game but lost my passion because I realized what the game is about and went to play tennis instead.
Nail on the head my freind i found chess 2 months ago and loved it. Coming on to youtube for tips and finding out the whole game is played completly of pre set strategy and memorisation has killed the fun for me 😂😂😂
honestly its easy for someone whos has done it all and more to say something like that ..."i hate Chess its too much work and boring" from someone like me isnt saying much lol
@@benjamindoody3462 not all that chess is
Opening theory didn’t ruin chess, it just changed who is good at it. It is kind of like social media. Social media didn’t ruin society, it just changed who was being heard. It is called evolution. Once the good guys learn the new tools it will evolve back to sanity.
Clearly Fischer speaks for extremely high level chess, but still. I used to play a lot of bullet chess online. I know bullet is not real chess, but.. The reality is that the game very quickly becomes boring, the higher in rating you play. Most of the players are just following a standard procedure. 1,2,3, exchange queens. 1,2,3 offer queen exchange, 1,2,3, force a queen exchange. If you play 2 hours of bullet a day, at least try and make it more sexy than applying a protocol that maximizes your chances to get the 6-7 rating point increase. The sad reality is that chess is also about routines. This wasn't true in the early days, in which little was known and players were naïve enough to follow their instinct or try out new things without being sure they would work, leading to exciting battles.
Well he was obviously right, and I like to think that the rising popularity of faster time formats is proof of it. There is so much more room for creativity when the opponent only has tens of seconds to come up with the best reply for a move that leaves theory, even if it's objectively not the "best" move
I wonder if shorter time formats privilege memorization and pre-arrangement even more. With less time to think, wouldn't pre-studied theory be a useful way to save time?
I didn't really get your point but I don't really think that shorter time formats favor greater creativity. Most of the players at the top level have expressed that playing longer time controls is the only way to actually improve at the game. (Anish even asked nihal about this recently, feel free to look it up)
Ehh not exactly. If you are playing something that neither of you know then sure, but most people will play obscure, uncommon moves because they know that they know the theory for it better than you. They don’t have to have it all perfect but they’ll have more of it memorized than you giving them an edge since you’re unlikely to find the best moves in a short period of time. In quick Chess though the reason opening matters less is because depending on the time format even if they make some positional mistakes and end up -1 or -1.5 positionally, if you make a mistake later on it’s extremely easy to lose the advantage. That said speed Chess isn’t all that amazing but with lowering attention spans and droves of new players coming in from twitch and from netflix’s the queens gambit it’s no wonder that this is the future of Chess
I think faster time formats further encourages memorization because whoever memorizes the most lines can have a huge advantage.
@@markhantla7915 yes, but there are two many possibilities. And too many ways to play. By playing differently than normally, both players immediately have to be creative
Fischer random is really awesome. You can't rely on theory for your openings, it maximize the creativity and talent of every top chess players. Beautiful to watch.
I agree. One comment, though: you can't rely on theory in the sense of thoroughly studied lines of play, but general principles still apply, like not moving too many pawns too soon, developping the pieces, planning for castling, considering the control of the center, watching out for weak spots, and so on. So, instead of saying that there is no theory in Fishcer Random, I would prefer to say that the theory for the openings is more abstract, leaving more space for imagination and creativity.
4:16 "even for me, a top chess player" - a slight understatement there 🤣😂🤣😅🤣😂
As a young man i showed a lot of potential in the game but when i realized that creativity could never overcome theory i stopped serious competition. He's right - it is a game of memorization. The sad truth. I didn't want to dedicate my life studying something that would leave me frustrated and penniless. You simply must accept the truth: if you don't hammer the homework and learn the how and why of the best moves, you will not advance. Simple as that. It's very disappointing to me, as I saw the cliff of theory study below me and ultimately thought: "it's just not worth it."
"ArE yOu tHe BeSt cHeSs pLayER eVeR?"
5:51 "I wanna get back to Fischer Random."
Poor Bobby :(
You know, people talk about how crazy he became in later life. But he’s making perfect sense
He's not. If you do not have the discipline or the brain power to master theories and take your skill to the next step, then just admit that. Bobby Fischer was great but he was just salty about the fact that chess players of today can now improve much faster using tools and building upon the plays of great players of the past.
speech like this has disadvantaged a lot of players who now wear "lack of theory" as a badge of honour , and dig their heels against the natural evolution of competitive gameplay
He wasn't. He had viewpoints that the mainstream did not want to hear. The US gov used him to beat USSR and then thru him under the bus because he was saying things that wasn't meant to be said. What he said then has turned out to be true. He has been vindicated.
@@iidoyila Natural deconstruction of gameplay due to determinism.
Here, I fixed it.
The moment any meta game occurs, fun gets lost.
im very competitive and either enjoy the meta or bucking it
"Crazy" Fischer sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Bobby's genius cannot be overstated
"Again, I think so. That's just my opinion."
It was difficult to get Bobby to stop being objective. And... that is one of the MANY reasons I liked Bobby.
I've always felt the same way, only that I am an eternal beginner. I've been playing for the last 6 or 7 years, and I've refused to study or memorize anything. All you need to know to have fun is to know what do you need to acomplish in a good opening (fight for the center, activate your pieces, then castle and connect the towers) and then basic tactical stuff like how to pin, forking, x-ray checks, generating good sinergies between your pieces, etc. Things you can be creative with, have fun and improve on your own by playing. I will never be a master or beat any decent player, but I'm fine with it, because I have fun. Simple as.
Well you learned enough tactics that it doesn't really makes sense to intentionally learn no theory lol.
I really enjoyed your comment. I mean unless you plan on attempting to become a grandmaster or world champion, why treat chess like it’s a job? It’s called a game for a reason.
@@johannwilder1437 Exactly!
I’ve gotten close to 2100 in blitz and I’ve never studied theory. I’ve playing for about 5 years or so now.
@@kacpermoney2820 Some people have talent. Others don’t. Just because you had success does not mean others, playing only with their natural skill and without any theory/computer prep CAN.
But it is true that computer-aided way is simply the most optimal one all around. Chess is too deterministic, unfortunately, which enables it to be computer-solvable (not fully yet, but to an extent).
when i first got into chess i was obsessed with it but it quickly turned into madness. i was trying to improve and learn shit until i saw pieces moving around when i was trying to fall asleep at night. i took a long break from it and recently got back into chess but this time i’ll focus more on enjoying it instead of improvement. im gonna be a player who treats chess as a game instead of work.
Lol you must have been studying hard!
You have already corrupted yourself. You can never again play with others just for fun because you have tainted your mind with knowledge.
Appreciative of his honesty and the insight he’s given 😮
From what I can see Bobby still spoke articulately and with good logic. The man was not mad. He made some odd comments but that doesn't make him mad.
He was not stupid or mad. But paranoid
@Clark Hull You can't assume things about technology. For example someone parked out on the street can listen to what people in a room are saying merely by focusing a laser on a window. A computer and software takes care of the rest. It's the same basic principle as when someone speaks into a phone except the person speaking in the room causes the window to vibrate. The vibrations are detected by the laser.
He's not crazy in terms of psychotic, i.e. detached from reality. He's "crazy" in that he suffers from likely several personality and behavioral disorders - paranoia and narcissism seem obvious. OCD and some sort of autism disorder are possibilities, too. I knew a guy who was a savant at a particular esport. But he was very paranoid and very narcissistic. In his mind if he didn't win, the game or tournament MUST be rigged. It had to be. After all, he's the best. If he lost, to him he didn't get beaten or was off his game, because that's impossible. It must be the fault of the format, the tournament, the audience, someone cheating, etc. So since the loss can't possibly be his fault, he would cheat to "counteract" these factors. He never saw it as wrong. He was merely compensating and correcting for even worse cheating already done to him. When cheating he viewed himself as the victim! When he got caught cheating, and warned, sanctioned or kicked out, he believed he was the only one who was being forced to play fair, while everyone else was allowed to cheat against him at will.
I'm not saying Fischer was the same, but I do see several similarities. But regardless, no, he wasn't crazy like a person who can no longer differentiate delusion from reality. He was "crazy" in that he was highly disordered and untreated.
The ONLY thing that kept Fischer going was his chess, which in turn resulted in legions of fans and some governments keeping him just above water. Any normal person with his level of disorder would be homeless, in prison or possibly dead.
@@jcasetnl what esports player are you talking about?
@@dannygjk bro that doesn’t help Bobby Fischer case at all lol it just makes you a weirdo
I never played chess on a high level but even in the lower ratings you already notice what fischer described: the more you play you start to memorize openings and patterns and the games become more and more boring. in my opinion you’re having the most fun with chess the very first few times you play the game. you make random moves but there is always your own thought behind it and you start to develop your own strategies and start thinking about what could be a good move and why and so on, no principles, no theory, no memorizing, no practicing...
I've been playing Minesweeper, Sudoku, Solitaire. Games that have you breaking your head and figuring out the puzzle. Sudoku especially has positions that are unsolvable unless you start thinking of advanced strategies. If games like this exist but against other players, they'd be so much fun but idk how that would workout.
This is the true essence of every game. It is fun when you're figuring things out, you don't have all the pieces and it keeps you curious enough to keep playing. The moment you finally understand a game and you break it is when the magic is lost.
You can literally play knight move up down for half of the game at 1200 elo and bellow and still win.
PS: I have a duck video, a chicken video, a video where i am begging for money on Twitter, a walking video, a video where i am playing with my nuts. A short with a blog. A Naruto Arena video... Also a patreon
No my guy, you do not relate to the greatest chess players ever.
Reminds me of the old pokemon games.. and then.. some years later.. pokemon showdown and shiny DV breeding happened..
and RNGing..
Started playing chess 2 years ago. Finished 8 chessable courses before touching an opening course and loved all of it. Have been going through my first opening course for the past few months and it's a completely different and frustrating experience. Lots of memorization like he says. I've heard good players say they hate chess before and it's my first taste of why. I still love it though
I like remembering this version of Bobby Fischer.
These interviewers are horrendous. Absolutely disgraceful the way they keep pressing him about being the greatest chess player who lived. What a trifling thing to say. He's still a human being, it's like he's a science experiment or something. The whole celebrity worship thing is just gross. Have conversation, pick his brain, anything but that. We already know how good he is at chess
The interviewer tried to put words in his mouth so they can publish it and stir controversy. They probably intended to title it “Fischer claimed to be the greatest ever chess player in the world!!!” Thankfully, he didn’t really buy it. They are just so disrespectful!!
Who knows who the greatest chess player of all time would be because chess is an evolving game. Like he said if the old masters were not allowed to open a single book in today's time they might not do so well in a single tournament, but if you brought them into today and let them retool and see things then who knows because so much has been learned, they might be destroying Magnus Carlsen, we might find out that they aren't so hot, nobody can truly know.
The interviewer was bobby's old friend, Saemundur Palsson who also was Bobby's bodyguard during the world championship. They were really good friends and knew each other really well, so I don't think he was being disrespectful or trying to put words in his mouth or anything like that. It's simply a converstation.
Bobby was trying to have a conversation, "aRe YoU tHe BeSt PlAyEr EvEr???" Complete and utter waste of oxygen to ask that question when Bobby is trying to have a real conversation.
@@scotchegg4268 such a shame, people always talk about how nuts bobby fischer was by the end of his life but he seemed like he had some interesting things to say if only the interviewer had a shred of decency.
No wonder he went nuts when you spend your life surrounded by pathetic yes men who constantly rabble about how much of a genius you are.
Despite not being much of a chess player myself, I understood completely what he was saying with the memorisation. As I understand it, this is what all the top players do. They know the openings out to move 20, and they prepare games with the help of computers and memorise lines hoping their knowledge on a particular line runs deeper than their opponents in order to get an advantage. For Fischer, this memorisation ruined chess at the very high level. And the point of Fischer random is that there are so many different board variations you can't memorise openings, so players are forced to "play chess" from move 1. I can understand his point!
Yes, Exactly!
With the utmost respect to my number 2 and number 3, Kasparov and Carlsen respectively, Bobby Fischer is undoubtedly the best chess player of all time on my personal list.
Even todays top GM's say that chess is a waste of life. For example Hikaru, Magnus, Anish and many more. Sometimes they say it as a joke but they actually say that because i think they aggree with Bobby. It is all about memorisation since computers do the work.
Bobby would have been an elite star-craft player in modern day.
Bobby would be an Age Of Mythology enthusiast
he would mock anyone who played on anything but the hardest difficulty
Koreans would have still smoked him
@@BoRisMc, Serral and Reynor would like a word with you.
@@KK-sg5gl fair enough
This is sad to see. It got so advanced and memorized that it wasn't fun any more.
So he says. In reality I'm not so sure. Fischer bailed when chess was getting interesting. You had all kinds of new theory coming out that was being explored all the time. Just look at how much the game changed from his hiatus until today. I think it's actually the OPPOSITE of what you wrote. Fischer was a perfectionist who realized there WAS NO overarching theory to win every match, and was afraid for the sake of his own style he'd get beaten.
I think you shouldn’t ignore the context of when this was said. In 2008, Chess was definitely in need in dire change. Most games were prearranged by theory I won’t lie to you. People didn’t actually know how to push chess forwards, right. Opening theory always sought the most advantage out of the opening, such was the way of Kasparov, who played a hyper aggressive take all give nothing style. Magnus however, introduced a new way of playing. As long as you got out okay in the opening, you could win even with a small edge, this is how the London System, the Colle System, several side variations of the Sicilian and Nf3 first move came to be. Basically a way of getting out of theory really fast and asking your opponent do they understand the position better than you do. I would say Magnus saved chess in general, and I think Fischer would say the same if he witnessed what happened after he died
To use a crude analogy, it's like when you finally figure out how to never lose and either win or force a draw in tic tac toe, except this is more complex so you dedicate a good chunk of your life to it and then it becomes empty.
@@gmnr1336 Very interesting take. Question though, Even if Magnus is the one that "saved" it, don't you think someone else would have came along at some point that would shake up the game in a good way, if it wasn't Magnus?
That would mean that Fischer was wrong, because he was commenting on computer systems, which he in no way knows anything about to make an educated on whether chess would be negatively impacted with the introduction of computers. He was very sure of himself, and that the game was completely destroyed, when he was wrong.
@@jonmacdonald2193 Well, Fischer more or less predicted what happened in Kasparov's time, the game was basically a memorization test with like a pop quiz at the end for Kasparov and other top gm's. Anand was known for his opening preparation and raised the standard for how deep you had to memorize. And I agree with Fischer entirely, something had to be done, otherwise all of chess would just be a standardized chess. But I think its safe to say chess is doing fine nowadays.
I mean, clearly Bobby Fischer was the best at chess. He got to the top, saw that there was nothing there, and got out before wasting more of his intellect on a solved game. And I think that's the mark of a true genius as compared with other intellects of any sport, in that the genius dares to reinvent the game while everyone else uses all their energy to optimize what is already known. How dare people say he went insane in his later years; he was a modern day Socrates in the chess world.
Its interesting how Magnus feels exactly the same way and tries all kinds of whacky antics to get out of theory. His promotion of Fischer Random is a testament of greatness of Fischer who witnessed the same problem in its early stages.