Tallahassee Democrat Tallahassee, Florida Tuesday, March 01, 1994 - Page 8
CLAIM TO FAME: A ranked player in the United States Chess Federation, Corden recently won the Tallahassee Chess Association championship tournament. … In addition to several regional victories, he also scored one of his biggest career wins over Vassily Smyslov, a former world champion from the former Soviet Union. … Corden also represented the English national team when he was a student at Oxford University during the 1970s.
QUOTING: “At the Siegen Olympiad in 1970, I watched Bobby Fischer play Boris Spassky, just before their famous match in Reykjavik. I never saw such excitement over a chess game — there were cameras and spectators everywhere, climbing over tables to get a view.”
The Palm Beach Post, West Palm Beach, Florida, Sunday, April 10, 1994 - Page 749
Chess Becoming More Theory Than Fighting Mettle, Creativity
With an increasing number of first-rate grandmasters competing for larger prizes, chess bears little resemblance to the game for gifted amateurs that it may have once been. One striking change: Data bases with tens of thousands of games have become standard equipment for today's tournament players.
At his first news conference after returning to chess two years ago, Bobby Fischer observed:
“Chess is becoming more and more memorization… They're analyzing the different openings now to the endings.”
As a remedy, he suggested “shuffling the first row of the pieces by computer and this way you will get rid of all the theory.”
Fischer, of course, had been away from the game for 20 years. But ex-world champ Anatoly Karpov — one of the more active players in the game — voice a similar complaint a few months ago. Understanding of the game and fighting mettle played a smaller role than before, he said, while the need for opening preparation had indeed escalated.
But Karpov's 18-year-old compatriot, Vladimir Kramnik — ranked among the top five players in the world — seems more bothered by the brutal struggle demanded by many of today's chess events than by the demands of keeping up with chess knowledge.
“They (qualifying tournaments for the world championship) are not much fun. You have to fight all the time. That's not what I like. I like to play and not to think about points. Nobody cares about creativity in these tournaments.”
After playing in such an event in Groningen, Holland, during December, the exhausted teenager complained: “I think that I couldn't survive another qualification tournament.”
Courier-Post, Camden, New Jersey, Sunday, October 30, 1994 - Page 79
The rise — and fall — of Bobby Fischer
Despite an obvious God-given talent, Bobby Fischer has always liked to remind people of his continuous hard work at the chessboard. From the beginning, the American prodigy knew he wanted to be the world champion of chess. And he worked increasingly to that end.
His rise was spectacular. In 1958, at the age of 14 (only eight years after he learned the moves), he became U.S. champion.
But contemporaries remember in the first years, although a good player, he was not yet an obvious future superstar. His game did not blossom until after his 13th birthday when the immersion and hard work began to pay off.
After compelling a spectacular tournament and match record, Fischer attained his goal of world champion in 1972, only to then absent himself from competitive chess for the next 20 years.
When he returned to play and defeat Boris Spassky a second time in a controversial exhibition match in Bosnia a couple of years ago, the old stamina and fierce will to win were noticeably diminished.
Overweight and out of shape, he even briefly dozed at the board during one of the early games in the match.
Competitively inactive since then, Fischer seems satisfied with his previous accomplishments. He has shown no desire to demonstrate that a rusty 50-years-plus chess legend can play on equal terms with today's top grandmasters.
Significantly, he told a 1964 audience: “After 40, it's all down-hill in this game.”
To try a real comeback would be different but no less inspirational than Michael Jordan's current attempt at a second career.
Fischer's chances of becoming number one in chess again are slim, but definitely better than Jordan's of becoming the best outfielder in baseball.
Here is a Fischer loss from a 1964 San Francisco simultaneous exhibition. He obviously missed Burger's 12 … Nf6!