Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall – Book Review

I got an electronic copy of the Endgame from the library, and have been reading it on my Android Tablet. The book is very detailed on a lot of fragments of Fischer’s biography that I had been unaware of. In particular I was surprised to see Tal as being one who teased Fischer, rather than being his friend.
The book is written to be a accessible to a non-chess player, but there are still a lot of insights into the chess playing environment. It was also interesting to see Petrosian described as a “boring” player. Either the author never saw any of Petrosian’s best games, or he just really wants to dumb things down for non-chessplayers. To me that appears to be a result of bias against Soviet players, but I also see how the book busts a few myths around Fischer that existed in Soviet chess literature – that Fischer was uneducated. Some sources would make things appear as if he was of below average intelligence, which is hard to understand given that he learned many foreign languages and was reading a lot of books on his own as a child.
Overall – if you are interested in what it takes for a genius to grow in a rather difficult environment – a very interesting read.

Unzicker – Fischer – Triumph of Black’s Strategy in Najdorf Sicilian

Unzicker – Fischer, 1962
Black to Move. Young Bobby Fischer has outplayed his opponent strategically. White’s king is weakened, the knight on ‘b3’ has no useful squares. However the "bad" bishop on g5 is placed not badly at all. Also Black’s rooks are very active. How to wrap up the game?

Too see the solution – watch the full game video from my youtube channel:

Fischer’s Strategic Decision – Endgame masterpiece

Fischer – Euwe, 1960

White to move. Fischer’s move was based on the deep strategic understanding of the role of pieces in this position. He identified that among Black’s pieces, only one is serving a useful defensive purpose, and only one of White’s pieces has not yet joined the battle. As a result of this observation, Fischer immediately traded off that pair of pieces, that left Black pieces tied up, and his ‘a7’ pawn – even more vulnerable.

For the solution, and brief overview of the entire game (taken from the “Mastering the Endgame” book by Shereshevsky) - watch the YouTube video: