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The third coming of Bobby Fischer?

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The third coming of Bobby Fischer?

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01:36

9/18/2001 The story is not going away, in fact it is gaining momentum. Many people believe that Bobby
Fischer has returned and is performing miracles on the Internet. Nigel Short said he was "99 per cent sure" he
has had played Fischer. Tim rabb, who was initially skeptical, has now seen the light. We have taken another
closer look at the evidence. Check it out more

01:48

Nigel Short-Horak Michal

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Is it a computer? Is it a program?
No, it's Bobby Fischer (some wish)
The story is that Bobby Fischer sometimes logs on to the Internet Chess Club (ICC) as a guest and plays an
incredible series of blitz games against random opponents. The pattern is always the same: "Fischer", who
does not have an ICC handle, will make contact either directly or through a third person and then play a
series of very fast blitz games ("bullet chess"), using preposterous openings and whipping the living daylights
out of his opponents. They are sworn to secrecy, so the games are seldom published. Only the stories of the
apparition, of the bone-chilling encounter with the ephemeral chess legend remains.
All this was a chess-club story, until Nigel Short went public with his encounter with the mysterious ICC
Fischer in the Telegraph last Sunday (9.9.01). Nigel revealed that he has played nearly 50 speed chess games
against Fischer during the past year. "I am 99 per cent sure that I have been playing against the chess
legend. It's tremendously exciting," he said. In October last year, in the first of their four confrontations, Nigel
lost 0:8, although he is one of the world's best speed chess players. "In my opinion Fischer is a much stronger
speed chess player than Kasparov, which is incredible when one considers that at 58 he is virtually a geriatric
in terms of the modern game," Nigel said.

Acevedo? Siegen 1970!


The final proof came when Nigel asked his mysterious opponent: "Do you know Armando Acevedo?" (an
obscure Mexican player). The response was immediate: "Siegen 1970." Fischer had played Acevedo in the
Siegen Chess Olympiad of 1970.

Okay, let's take a look at this piece of evidence first.

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THE RUY LOPEZ
BREYER VARIATION
Pavel Eljanov explains in
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what became an opening
choice of the likes of
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or Carlsen. The Breyer
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29.90

I have my ChessBase or Fritz program loaded.


I press Ctrl-F to get the search mask, type in Acevedo, Fischer.

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Repertoire idea by Adrian
Mikhalchishin: inflict an

9/15/15, 1:00 PM

The third coming of Bobby Fischer? | Chess News

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Five seconds later I have the one game played between Acevedo and Fischer. The tournament
is given as "Siegen Olympiad 1970".
Maybe I would have added "It was an A49 Anti-King's Indian system with 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6." or
something to that effect.As an experienced user it would take me about ten to fifteen seconds to
prepare the message. I have know Nigel since he was a child, and I can tell you this is what he
means when he says "immediately".

isolated pawn upon the


Nimzo Indian! Sergei
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Now let us look at the logic of the whole story. After his "rematch" against Spassky in 1992 Fischer cannot
return to the United States, since the State Department had forbidden the match which broke the embargo
imposed on Yugoslavia at the time. Fischer spent a number of years in Hungary, today he lives in Japan. Is it
possible that from there he is fopping the Internet community?

29.90

The ICC Fischer usually starts his game with some really crazy moves, like 1.f3 d5 2.c3 Nf6 3.Kf2 e5 4.Ke3 or
1.e4 c5 2.Ke2 Nc6 3.Ke3. And he wins. Aha, obviously this points to two things: the ICC Fischer wants to
avoid the main lines of modern chess theory, just as he has propagated with his Fischer Random Chess.
Secondly the legendary Fischer is the only player with the god-like abilities to actually win such games against
strong players all the way up to a top professional like Nigel Short.

A DANGEROUS
ANTI-SICILIAN: 1.E4
C5 2.NF3 E6 3.G3!
Play like Carlsen, avoid
theory but without being
passive or losing the
initiative.

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ANTI-BAJONETEATTACK IN THE
KING'S INDIAN
The Mar del Plata
Variation in the King's
Indian could be faced with
an uncomfortable
Bayonette Attack. Marin
shows how to face that.

9.90
BEATING THE
FRENCH
ACCORDING TO
KUPREICHIK

Bobby Fischer 1972 in Reykjavik

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5


4.c3 Nc6 5.Be3!?. Andrew
Martin uses the games of
Kupreichik to show why
this line could catch many French aficionados
unprepared and is very dangerous for Black.

9.90

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Niggemann

and 1992 in Sveti Stefan


Okay, we look at the logic of this second piece of evidence. Since his historic match against Boris Spassky in
1972 Fischer has only played 30 public games, in the 1992 rematch in Sveti and Beglrade. Do you believe
that this man, now 58 years old, could suddenly resurface, and beat the strongest GMs in the world in
lightning blitz games, after giving them a tremendous advantage in the opening? No, not beat them, tear
them to pieces, wipe the floor with them. If you can believe this you must have great powers of credulity and
faith.
But what is the alternative? Who else could be doing this? There is an obvious answer. Only a computer would
be able to do what the mysterious ICC Fischer has done on the Internet. In fact it is exactly what you would
expect from a fast, tactical program. You can easily try it out. Load Fritz, Junior, Shredder or Tiger, preferably
on a 1.4 MHz or faster machine, force the first moves of the ICC Fischer player and then play on against the
program. At three minute time controls. You can also jump into the sea off the Florida coast and pick a fight
with the denizens swimming around there.
Personally I find it much easier to believe that Nigel Short and the rest are getting mauled by a very fast
computer (and a very proficiet computer operator) than by a 58-year-old non-playing GM however great
and charismatic this player might have been thirty years ago. As to the question why on earth anyone would
perpetrate such an eloborate hoax, I again have a pat answer: because it is fun! Can you imagine anything
more entertaining than whipping Nigel Short, convincing him that he is getting licked by a ghost, and then
having him publish it all in the Telegraph.

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Is it him, or isn't it him?


But not everbody gives up so easily. My old friend Tim Krabb originally thought the ICC player was not
Fischer. "Playing over these games, you get the impression that the mysterious guest is a fantastically strong
player," wrote Tim in his Chess Diary (article 134). But he gives three reasons why the player cannot be
Fischer after all:
1. As a chessplayer, Fischer was always a gentleman. The real Fischer would not insult his opponents with
ridiculous openings.
2. As Fischer indicated in one of his Radio Bombo interviews, using pseudonyms is typically Jewish. The
real Bobby Fischer would never stoop to Jewishly logging on as guest-so-and-so - he would choose a
name that would robustly reveal who he is.
3. Most telling, the real Bobby Fischer would never play a move like Kf4, as in the game above, which is
known to have always been favored by Jews.
The last point is tongue-in-cheek: Krabb gives positions by three Jewish players who, deep in the game, had
indeed moved their kings to the square f4 (Tim is a chess humourist).
Now Tim has had a change of heart and frankly says "I take back everything I said
and claim the opposite" (see Chess Diary article 139). He has found convincing
evidence that the ICC player is not a computer. The evidence turned up in a series of
25 three-minute blitz games that one 'Guest71' played on 24 April 2001 against
'Beber', the French IM Robert Fontaine (right), who had then an ICC rating of 2827
(and a FIDE-rating of 2452). guest71, always with absurd openings, won 20 games,
lost 3, and two games were drawn. For Tim the most interesting game was the
following:
Guest71 Beber, ICC 3 0, 2001: 1.e4 c5 2.Ke2 Nc6 3.Ke3 g6 4.Nc3 Nd4 5.d3
Nf6 6.Kd2 d5 7.Ke1 Bg7 8.h3 O-O 9.a3 e5 10.Bg5 Be6 11.exd5 Bxd5
12.Nxd5 Qxd5 13.c3 Ne6 14.Be3 Rad8 15.Qa4 e4 16.dxe4 Nxe4 17.Rc1 a6
18.Be2 b5 19.Qxa6 c4 20.Rd1 Qf5 21.Nf3 Nxc3 22.bxc3 Bxc3+ 23.Nd2 Nc5 24.Bxc5 Bxd2+ 25.Rxd2
Rxd2 26.Kxd2 Rd8+ 27.Kc1 Qe5.

Tim Krabb writes: "White is two Bishops up, but he cannot prevent a perpetual with 28...Qa1+ or, after
28.Kb1, with Qf5+ 29.Ka1 Qe5+. White played the surprising 28.Bxc4. At first, I thought this was a typical
computer move. My computer programs do look at it, but finally they play 28.Qxb5 Qa1+ with a draw.
However, there is also a typical human maxim for this kind of situation: "You can only take one at a time." So
why not Bxc4? after Qxc5, you have 29.Qxb5, and will remain a pawn up. What makes Bxc4 human too, is
that it does not change the result: after 28...bxc4 29.Qb6 it's still a draw with Qa1+. It could just as well be a
very human last attempt to let the opponent go wrong, and win a drawn game."
What do we say to that? Well, a quick check with all top engines does reveal that they will play 28.Qxb5, but
if the operator is running in multiple variation mode he might well see the text move come up as the second
or third best line.

In this example (on a 666 MHz computer) we can see that Deep Fritz sees at least two ways to draw the
position. If I select the second line, and then start entering the black moves as played by Beber/Fontaine,
Fritz duplicates every single move after that, all the way to the final mate: 28...Qc3+ 29.Kb1 bxc4 30.Rc1
Qb3+ 31.Ka1 Rd2 32.Qc8+ Kg7 33.Bf8+ Kf6 34.Qc6+ Kf5 35.Qc5+ Kf6 36.Qe7+ Kf5 37.Qxf7+ Kg5
38.Be7+ Kh6 39.Qf8+ Kh5 40.g4#.

A bit of further exploration reveals that some programs actually have 28.Bxc4 as their first line:

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The third coming of Bobby Fischer? | Chess News

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As you can see in the picture above Gambit Tiger (a good choice for the wild ICC Fischer games)
switches to 28.Bxc4 after one second. It sticks with this move for as long as you care to let it run.
Tim has one more argument: "The ICC keeps this kind of game in their database, with times used for each
move. When I looked at that, I was in for a surprise: guest71 never took more than 3 seconds for any move
in that game, but 28.Bxc4 cost him 12 seconds."
Interesting. That means that he was probably using Deep Fritz in multi-variation mode, and paused to think
about the options available at move 28. He may have even played through a few moves and decided that
there were greater pitfalls after 28.Bxc4. Or he may have simply run through the first line to see the full
draw (28.Qxb5 Qa1+ 29.Kc2 Qa2+ 30.Kc3 Qd2+ 31.Kxc4 Qxe2+ 32.Kb4 Qb2+ 33.Kc4 =), before deciding to
go for the"other drawing line".
Finally it is entirely possible that our ICC Fischer is using a dual processor system and running multiple
engines, choosing the move he thinks is most promising.

Deep Fritz and Gambit Tiger running in parallel, each giving its first move.
So what do we conclude? It could be that Bobby Fischer hath decended unto us to play miraculous games of
chess. But Occams Razor forces at least the author of this piece to believe that ICC Fischer is a prankster
using a fast computer and one or more of the top programs available today to create an urban legend that will
stay alive in chess circles for a long time to come.

Games of ICC Fischer


We give you some of the games by "Fischer" on the ICC. The first 24 are against "Beber",
which is the handle of IM Robert Fontaine. The second set is against "Ural", who is IM
Alexander Reprintsev (42), FIDE rating: 2428 (June 2001). You can replay the game on
our Java boards. You can use the control buttons below the board or click the notation on
the right, which will cause the board to follow.
If you have any theories on the games, e.g. which program duplicates the moves of
"Fischer" in a specific game, or if you have played any games yourself against the ICC
Fischer, please contact us..
Here are the games

Frederic Friedel
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Please use this account if you want to contribute to or comment on our news page service
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