You make an interesting point. While we’ll never know what would have happened to Fischer in the age of computers, his work ethic would of necessity have to be directed differently and he may not have had the advantage that he created for himself in the pre-computer chess age. I wonder if he’s met any played Capablanca yet…I understand that Steinitz and God are still having at it with draw after draw.
I did not miss the point. At his level, creativity is more important than raw data. He scanned the databases to see if anyone had caught up to his understanding of various openings and middlegame positions. Fischer did not puppet theory like many players do today; he created it. The reason why he was rarely in time trouble was because his preparation carried him deep into the middlegame. It was clear from his annotations that he had some openings studied all the way to particular endgames. A number of variations and subvariations should carry his name because he was the primary research force behind them.
Fischer’s greatest strengths were in the endgame and in the transition to the endgame. His ability to simplify and resolve complex positions was on a par with Capablanca and Rubinstein. This strength was not something to be gained easily from databases but hard study, analysis, and practice. The young guns of today prefer to scour databases for opening surprises. Not many study endgame theory with the depth and discipline needed.
While I agree that Fischer was great in the endgame, I think it’s a stretch to say that (his) raw creativity is more important than the data that a computer can crunch for players today. I think he would have been an excellent player in today’s world, but how successful will be an unknown unless we can all enter a space/time warp.
I think you have a different perception of Fischer than has been generally observed. Fischer, was, of course, an excellent endgame player, but that is now what set him apart from his contemporaries. If anyone from the post-war era should be compared to Rubinstein, it would be Smyslov, not Fischer. And if a “rusty” Fischer had faced Karpov, in 1975, it would have been Karpov’s superior endgame skills that might have kept him in the match.
In Frank Brady’s Fischer-bio, “Endgame,” he recounts an anecdote of dining with the then 17 year old Bobby a week before he was to travel to South America. Brady expresses his amazement as Fischer plays through games of Bronstein and Taimanov on a pocket set, all from memory. Brady had never seen anything like it, and I assume he had been around GM’s other than Fischer. Yet today, any strong player can do exactly that with their laptop. And there are many comments from the “Russians,” as to Fischer’s remarkable knowledge of games past and present. A large part to chess mastery is pattern recognition, and that is enhanced by being exposed to countless positions from high-level games. But today, in the era of chess databases, 14 year old Sam Sevian has seen more games and more positions than Fischer did through 1972.
Fischer was a remarkable talent with a work-ethic of one possessed, but what made him unique from his contemporaries, was his ability to process more information and remember it, and that is exactly what chess databases help humans do.
I think this is wrong-headed. In the 1970s, Karpov’s relative strength was in the middlegame. In both the 1974 and 1978 matches, Korchnoi regularly outplayed Karpov in the endgame (partly because of experience, partly because he would outcalculate Karpov). I think that Fischer 1975 would definitely have been a better endgame player.
Granted, my hopelessly vague generalizations do disservice to all these great players.
“Speculative?” “Misinformed?” Perhaps, but wrong-headed? No. 40 years ago I spent a lot of time looking at Karpov’s endgame play vs Fischer’s play, and I arrived at the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that Karpov was more adept at approaching the endgame, primarily because he had more experience at seeing the engame of an extension of his middlegame approach. Fischer was a dogged competitor, no doubt, and if he didn’t beat you in the opening, and failed to beat you in the middle game, then, by god, he was going to try and beat you in the endgame, but he wasn’t as systematic, IMO, as Karpov. If the 1975 match had happened, I suspect Karpov’s approach would have been to get to the endgame vs Bobby and gut it out. And, at the time, I had a master level coach who supported my studies and conclusion.
And yes, Korchnoi was a persistent and able endgame player because, by the late '70s, he had way more experience in top level endgames than Fischer and Karpov combined. Fischer’s career vs top level opponents was relatively brief. In the endgame, Korchnoi was also better than Fischer. But Smyslov was the best.
Counterfactuals are fun… Young Karpov would have been even stronger had he had serious competition in the 1970s. Fischer played the great Soviet players in their prime, and Kasparov had Karpov.