< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 7 OF 7 · Later Kibitzing> Mar-11-13 RookFile : Most of us think about the endgame, but I find the opening remarkable. Black is ahead a pawn, after all. One wrong move, one failure to exploit compensation by Fischer, and black probably wins this game, not loses it. Aug-27-13 tarashi88 : 81. ... Nd3, Kd4 or Kd6 (DRAW!!!) Apr-10-14 gabriel112000 : Incredible! Fischer found the only winning move after move 81 and that is 82. Bc8!! Apr-10-14 Petrosianic : The win isn't that hard to find after 81...Ke4??? 82. Bc8! is the best move, yes, but not too difficult to find. The incredible thing about the ending is that a GM would forget that the King is supposed to go in the corner in an ending like this. Apr-10-14

keypusher : <Petrosianic: The win isn't that hard to find after 81...Ke4??? 82. Bc8! is the best move, yes, but not too difficult to find. The incredible thing about the ending is that a GM would forget that the King is supposed to go in the corner in an ending like this.> Well, 81....Kd4 and 81....Nd3 aren't exactly intuitive if the idea is to get the king to h8. 81....Ke4 is a losing error, since Taimanov had a draw before the move and a loss after, but I'm not sure it deserves the two question marks it regularly gets. Certainly it's not anything like him hanging the rook in game 5. Apparently 81....Kd6 also draws -- that is a little more intuitive. It has been posted before, but Fischer had a winning endgame at the first adjournment. He misplayed it early in the second session, which is why Taimanov had a draw here. As far as I know, that was pretty much the only thing Fischer did wrong in the 12 games against Taimanov and Larsen. Apr-10-14 Petrosianic : Granted, Game 5 was a lot worse. That was an obvious tactical oversight, where this was an obvious strategic one. It's hard to say which one is more inexplicable. Hanging a rook is bad enough, but how do you simply forget basic principles? The King goes on h8. The Knight can be given up if necessary to make this possible. For a GM, yeah, I'd give it two question marks (for a club player, maybe not). That's true what you said about the second adjournment. Apr-10-14

keypusher : <Hanging a rook is bad enough, but how do you simply forget basic principles? The King goes on h8. The Knight can be given up if necessary to make this possible.> But how do we know Taimanov forgot about this possibility, as opposed to carrying it out wrong? Because the white king is closer to h8 than the Black king, it's not exactly obvious how to make that strategy work. Black seems to need more than one idea to draw. Borrowing some of the analysis <Ayler Kupp> posted, after 81...Kd4 82.Be2 Ke4 (now playable) 83.h4 Kf4 84.h5 Nd7+ and now if 85.Ke7, then the path to h8 opens: 85....Kg5! 86.Kxd7 Kh6 and draws. But if 85.Kg7, then of course the black king is never getting to h8. Instead the king has to anchor the knight, which has to block the pawn's progress. 85....Kg5 86.h6 Nf6 87.Bd1 Ne8+ 88.Kh7 Nf6+ and draws. And if 87.Bb5 then there is an echo: the knight oscillates between h5 and f6 instead of e8 and f6. The second line is a little bit like the game line, except Black can't be zugzwanged like he is in the game after 85.Bf5 and again after 87.Kg6. And why is it zugzwang after 85.Bf5? Because the bishop covers both of the knight's checking squares, as opposed to just one of them in the second line given above. None of this strikes me as intuitive or obvious. Quoting <Ayler Kupp> <Why does 81...Kd4 draw and 81...Ke4 lose? Just the position of the pieces. I'm not aware of any general principles that favor one move versus the other. It's just a matter of calculation.> Apr-10-14 Olavi : Of course 81...Kd4 is just as or more counterintuitive than 81...Ke4, but 81...Nd3 really is obvious. And so is 81...Kd6, also drawing. Apr-10-14 Petrosianic : <keypusher> : <But how do we know Taimanov forgot about this possibility, as opposed to carrying it out wrong? Because the white king is closer to h8 than the Black king, it's not exactly obvious how to make that strategy work. Black seems to need more than one idea to draw.> Okay granted, the idea of mind reading is a bit much. We don't know that he FORGOT, exactly. Perhaps he remembered the principle but thought something else would be even better. What makes the game incredible is this. Look at the position right before Ke4. The first thing you notice is that the Bishop is the wrong colour to queen the pawn. This means Black can lose the knight with impunity as long as the King gets to h8. Now, suppose Black plays 81...Kd6. White is in a kind of near-Zugzwang. The Bishop is trying to guard two diagonals at once. If he abandons the d1-h5 diagonal, Black plays Nf3 and draws easily (the Knight lodges itself on h4, and if White moves his King to capture it, the Black king scoots to h8. Draw. Black can also draw with sequences like Nd3-f4. The theme is the same no matter what. Stick the Knight on a Black square where it can keep watch on the h pawn, but the Bishop can't touch it. It doesn't do the White King any good to get to h8 first, because he's the one that has to dislodge the Knight. When it does, Black scoots to h8. All the drawing plans involve Black getting his king to h8. It takes a lot of words to explain, but a GM would know this at a glance, especially after studying the ending so long. The exact move sequences aren't that obvious, but the general idea is. All roads lead to Kh8. So, why he should run the other way is just incredible. Maybe Taimanov is related to Roy Riegels? Apr-10-14 Petrosianic : So again, what possible point is there to Ke4? To protect the Knight? The Knight doesn't NEED protection. Give it up. Lose it. Send it to the glue factory. Just get the King to h8. Apr-10-14

perfidious : It's perfectly obvious-Fischer hypnotised Taimanov at the finish, a la Tal. An alternative explanation is that the outcome was the settlement of a karmic debt. Apr-10-14 Petrosianic : I just wish it were something that simple. I'm afraid I still have to go with the Riegels Theory. Apr-10-14

keypusher : <Olavi: Of course 81...Kd4 is just as or more counterintuitive than 81...Ke4, but 81...Nd3 really is obvious. And so is 81...Kd6, also drawing.> To me 81....Nd3 isn't any more obvious than 81....Kd4. <Petrosianic>

<So, why he should run the other way is just incredible.> How is it that ...Ke4 is running the wrong way but ...Kd4 isn't? If you use a ruler d4 is further away from h8 than e4 is. The really funny thing is, on any of e4, d5, d4, or d6, the black king is exactly four moves from h8. ...Ke4 is (i) one of the ways to approach h8 <and> (ii) supports the knight in its effort to block or capture the pawn. It only fails because of Bc8 and the subsequent zugzwang. Ayler Kupp's second line basically consists of wasting a move so White's bishop moves to a bad square, then doing what Taimanov apparently tried to do in the game. Apr-10-14 Petrosianic : Kd4 and Ke4 are both the wrong way. Kd6 is the right way. Granted, you can get to h8 in 5 moves with all three (if the way is unobstructed), but it won't be unobstructed if you try to go THROUGH the White King. You've got to go around it. You can do this with Kd6 because the King gets diverted capturing the Knight. Also, Ke4 approaches the pawn from behind. The King needs to be in front of it. Rooks belong behind passed pawns, Kings belong in front. Apr-10-14

keypusher : <Petrosianic>

<Kd4 and Ke4 are both the wrong way. Kd6 is the right way.> That makes no sense. First of all, ...Kd4 isn't wrong. It draws. Second of all, the White king is just as much (or as little) in the way if the black king goes to d6 as if it goes to e4. <Also, Ke4 approaches the pawn from behind. The King needs to be in front of it.> Wherever it goes, Black's king isn't getting in front of the pawn without White's cooperation. The one thing for certain is that the king is closer to the pawn on e4 than on d6. And moving your king closer to your opponent's last pawn in an endgame is almost always a good idea. I think you're basically trying to show that this endgame is drawable with nothing more than bromides, and therefore it's completely inexplicable that Taimanov lost it. I don't agree with either proposition. Apr-10-14 Petrosianic : The anti-positional move that he didn't play might have drawn, but the anti-positional move the he did play loses. But why make an anti-positional move at all when the obvious positional one draws fairly easily? (Even if Kd4 somehow works, it's the wrong way to go, on general principle). Mind you, I'm not staking out some new and outrageous position here, just explaining why every book on this match was right to give 81... Ke4 two question marks. (Rxf6 in Game 5 deserves three.) Apr-10-14

keypusher : <But why make an anti-positional move at all when the obvious positional one draws fairly easily?> <Petrosianic> I think we've reached the repetition stage of our argument, so I'll stop with the observation that what you say above strikes me as begging the question. Apr-10-14 Petrosianic : It may come down to annotating style. Some people don't like too many question marks on a move, and like to avoid triples. I'm fine with up to three question marks. In Politifact Terms, one Question Mark is "Mostly False", two question marks is "False", and three question marks is "Pants on Fire". More than three is overdoing it. May-22-14 john barleycorn : Actually, in this game Fischer followed a recommendation which Nikitin gave in his book on the sicilian, 1970. In a footnote he mentions 12.N1c3 a move Fischer analysed and prepared. Taimanov had not taken notice of Nikitin's remark and thus he was in theoretically new territory. By move 41 Fischer had an extra pawn and patiently converted it 48 moves later into a win. May-22-14

TheFocus : <perfidious> < It's perfectly obvious-Fischer hypnotised Taimanov at the finish, a la Tal.> Perhaps Taimanov should have brought his Ray-Bans with him, a la Benko? Jul-30-14 posoo : AT LAST - a game dat reminds me of da why I play. Ovosly I cannot play as well as fischer in a tornamet. But 55 Bb3 is EXACTLY da type of move dat computers miss but I play intooitivly and immediately in a game of three minute WHOPPINGS. Look at greedy tummanov gobbling up da pon! Big mistake, here comes da king to da other side! Aug-30-14 1 2 3 4 : <tarashi88> maybe... just maybe you forgot fischer had a pawn -.- Sep-09-16

keypusher : < posoo: AT LAST - a game dat reminds me of da why I play. Ovosly I cannot play as well as fischer in a tornamet. But 55 Bb3 is EXACTLY da type of move dat computers miss but I play intooitivly and immediately in a game of three minute WHOPPINGS. Look at greedy tummanov gobbling up da pon! Big mistake, here comes da king to da other side!> Not really fair to Taimanov, posoo. Fischer realized that he had reached a dead end on the queenside and there was just one way to keep the game going -- giving up the pawn. But his king was sure to reach the kingside before Taimanov's whether Black took the pawn or not. Taimanov was neither greedy nor mistaken to take it, since afterwards he could still could have drawn the endgame, as you can see from the kibitzing. Be interesting to see what a really strong engine would play at move 55. Jan-22-17 Clodhopper : 55. Bb3 was the move that caught my attention too - because it is the sort of move I would NEVER play. Being simple-minded, my instinct is for the straightforward 55. Rb6+, after which it is hard to see how white makes much headway, and Fritz calculates a mere +0.47 for white. After the game moves 55. Bb3, Nb5+, 56Ke3 Kxc5 it is +0.82. But black has a better option than 56 ... Kxc5. If instead, 56 ..., Re5+, 57. Kf4, Rxc5 is possible, because 58. Ba4 is met with ... Rc4+. In this variation, black's rook has greater mobility, and Fritz calculates white's advantage at 0.38. e.g., a draw. Jun-09-19 N.O.F. NAJDORF : 'Black ends up in Zugzwang,he cannot keep the knight protected,so it must be moved or lost.' Black cannot prevent White's pawn from queening. THAT'S why black resigned!

The thing that strikes me is the similarity to the fourth game, with the decisive factor being the dominance of White's king bishop and helplessness of Black's knight. Jump to page # (enter # from 1 to 7)

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