Bobby Fischer in 1972

It’s hard not to feel that this film is really about cars and not chess. Some fine automobiles in evidence, including a Citroen DS and an early Range Rover.

This was when the world was young. A year after the fall of Bretton Woods, but before the deployment of the Oil Bomb. Some consider 1972 the last full year of a golden age.

It’s a beautiful film, anyway, and makes me wish I could feel interested in chess. Even meeting Nigel Short in 1993 (in St James’s Park during his spanking by Kasparov; he told me to go forth and multiply, if I remember rightly) didn’t manage that.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9XgReXHWw8&rel=1]

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3 Replies to “Bobby Fischer in 1972”

  1. I think most of us would struggle to call chess a thrilling spectator sport.

    As for participation, I really liked it for a while as a child, then it started to get more competitive. The problem is, whilst it isn’t yet a solved game, both openings and endings have been very well studied. If you can be bothered to spend hours putting these situations into your memory then you get a lot of wins against someone like me who didn’t put that work in. But, to me at least, that approach takes a lot of joy out of the game, there’s no sense of discovery, of things developing and you responding. It’s the contrast between football (soccer) and American Football, if you like.

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