Hi there.
In this lecture, we see Bobby Fischer playing against Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Championship
match.
So round six was an absolute masterpiece.
One of my favorite games from this match, Fischer playing with C4.
So throughout his career, he had been saying E4 best by test, but he's been leaving this little surprise.
The art of war is often the exceptional surprise playing a surprise C4 and it transposes into Queen's
Gambit, the client territory in particular.
Spassky plays the Taunt Corporation, so H six, H four, B six, so named after finally taunt a very
witty guy.
It's ready to go check out his quotations.
So basically here Fischer plays C takes D five.
We have Knight takes two, five, Bishop takes he's seven.
Queen S.C seven 9/10 d5e tanks D five Rook C one Bishop E six Queen 84c5.
So this is kind of theoretical so far.
Queen Afraid so.
Fischer's showing he's been acutely aware, actually, of Queen's Gambit decline variations in the openings.
So Rook C eight we have Bishop B5.
He thinks an interesting alternative is Queen bee, seven hair and black cats, the hanging pawns under
these circumstances.
You know, this gambit here is quite interesting with 96.
So, for example, yeah, it wasn't much of hanging pawns for him just for a moment in there, but Black's
got good activity here.
And Black might even have a small edge.
So the variation is actually playable with Queen Bee seven.
Yeah, it's incredible.
But this Queen Bee seven does seem to be quite a lively continuation for black just offering a basically
a gambit her.
So just bear that in mind.
Other moves like 97, this is just equal.
So this gambit might see six D tanks.
This is going to be good for white here.
But the Gambit Queen B seven makes the thing actually playable.
If you want to play this taunt, go variation with black.
It's not the end of the story here, but we see a6d tank.
So Black has these so called hanging pawns.
So it's like an extended, isolated queen's pawn.
If rook tank C5 had been played just with the isolated pawn, this should be about equal.
It could end up being like this, for example, even.
But anyway, B takes c5 y Carlsen's Rook seven So now the frets is actually 8b5 because the Queen protects
in the rook.
We have Bishop E to 97 and now there is a resource available because of this pin relative pin 94.
So the thing is, is why actually grabbing Black's light square bishop.
Yes, Queen F8, though, is play, which kind of maybe starts to make things a bit worse than they
needed to be.
Knight B6 As example, Knight takes this position is a small edge.
For whites, a five, maybe even slightly more active black could against a four year play of six.
And if five might age seven, White has got don't square weaknesses.
And this should be about even this position.
So yes space case seems starts to go quite passive with his pieces with Queen F eight.
We see Knight takes ss, F takes SS, And now?
Yes.
What's the key move here?
So this is fascinating.
We've got this light squared bishop without a counterpart, so it could be useful on light squares.
But these look like distant dreams, right?
Right now, these diagonals look like absolute distant dreams, locked in cupboards far, far away.
And Spassky has, in his time with his iconic games, demonstrated that you can get on attacking diagonals.
But this is Fischer against Spassky.
Is Fischer such an amazing attacking player.
He can make use of this Bishop here.
This is the question.
So what's the first move, you think here?
Bring the cupboards towards you with sacrifices.
Open up.
Open up the secrets of those cupboards for trying to open up the secrets of these diagonals, trying
to give the Bishop C-4.
And that's given immediately.
Default.
Maybe more resistant is the materialistic de tax E4.
On principle, it looks absolutely dicey to do this.
But yeah, y can just target e six and why?
It might need to be a little bit resourceful here to push the advantage.
So f three.
For example, this position where blank is even.
A pawn up potentially five 5 to 4 pawns.
But blacks under tremendous pressure here.
So if the if the rook is protected, for example Queen D free Shaq check and then taking out E6 going
into an end game with an advantage.
If c4 instead Queen H 395 as an example E times e times B free is nice here.
So C takes eight isolated Queen's pawn.
There should be prospects here for white weight has a small edge here, but this kind is very welcoming
for the bishop to be on C4 now.
So all of a sudden this looks like a great position.
We have a delay on playing Bishop C for F4.
And now Queen is 785.
So this kind of locks down that night, tries to make the night passive.
Root beer makes things actually a lot worse than they needed to be.
So this is a funny position.
So we've got the eight.
It seems as though here instead of the A, B, six to try and get onto the D5 square looks like a logical
thing one would do.
What would be the problem here?
Well Queen defray.
Let's look at this from a 95 queen ee four and all of a sudden, hang on, we're getting a battery on
this diagonal which justifies these dot square pawns.
They're totally complementary with this.
Bishop Fischer has put his pawn voluntarily on these dark squares, but this diagonal is great now without
having the use of the F6 square.
So what does Black play here, Queenie?
Eight five.
And this is leading to trouble.
One could even sack the exchange.
This is just too much for black.
For example, nine tanks brought tanks.
And let's say C4, because if Queen takes it we don't play bishop for that loses.
No, we're after the king here.
We're attacking players.
We've got to, we're looking at war ending mechanisms.
Bishop Defray.
We're going for the champ mate not minding the exchange down.
And here, for example, Jack Bishop F5 now actually is crushing because it's kind of winning a whole
rook there.
That's okay to do that.
They're in this position instead of Rook have seven of G6, we get Rook have six.
That's crushing.
So yeah, there are these crushing scenarios where even the exchange down after night six.
Yeah, we're looking forward to this diagonal, which might explain why Boris Spassky was interested
in putting his knight on F eight to cover some of these squares.
So yes, but technically, it does make things worse.
But yeah, with with best play though it seems as though White's got the advantage anyway.
Quite a strong advantage here.
So.
Okay, so rugby ain't we have Bishop C-4 back to the game.
Bishop C-4.
So the Knights potentially posts on fire to parry this diagonal.
So Queen H, three points, F eight.
So it's holding up H seven and G six squares, or particularly H Seven's importance not to be mated
with a queen on H seven sport by the bishop.
If Rook takes B to him, Bishop takes it.
He thinks this position is just great for why one's got extra mobility and can switch again to this
sensitive, diagonal menacing ideas of Bishop e4.
So this position, for example, Queen G six, it's just the big edge for Y, big advantage.
So Knights F eight is played and now be free.
We have a five and now F five cracking open the file.
So this creates some concrete threats.
Now, if this wasn't taken on F five, say A4, then F six is very dangerous with F takes G seven and
we get the F six square looking at each six.
So this position doubling the rocks away from the glare of the queen and first thing, rock takes our
fight.
And this position is just dismantling to black so it takes was played rotates at five points H seven
Rogue cf1 Queen D eight Queen G3.
And now some moves were played soon just to get to the time.
So this is it.
Move 30 B seven.
This next move is is very significant now E6 vacating E5 to get a pins pawn potentially and great prospects
of rook have seven when black isn't watching too closely b seven Queen E five.
So yes, this looks absolutely like a menacing position.
Queenie ain't a full queen D eight So Black is kind of paralyzed here with that absolute pinning against
the king, that pawn being pinned.
This is a great position.
Rook One f to Queen.
He ain't rook to afraid.
This is working way for the time control.
So moves which don't seem totally optimal.
But now with Bishop defray this bishop without the counterpart is being demonstrated.
If he can be in a battery against H seven, you might think, well the Knights of 87.
But what we do is play rook f eight at some points.
Then Knight takes, we take their Queen's eights and we're mating with Queen H seven.
So in other words, this is a very scary build up for black.
So Queen Queenie for Black tries 9f6.
Here to sort out the issue for the record, if Knight of six wasn't played, it's pretty terminal here
if rook b seven when mating.
Actually, it's not just the case of winning material.
Guess how we're mating in this position.
At some points.
Yeah.
We just play rock our faith check.
So whatever way black takes, if night takes, then we just take out the defender rook tanks and fact
check Queen, H7 and Checkmate.
And also, what if the Queen took so.
So Rook?
What if the Queen thought you might ask?
Yes.
The stronger move here is just the mate H7.
We've just got H7.
We just play.
Queen takes H7.
Checkmate.
So you might ask.
Hold on.
Okay, hold on.
What about.
Gee, thanks.
So here it's very strong of Queen E5 the position and Rook have seven.
Black is really quite stuck for things to do here.
If rock takes up seven, Rock takes half seven Queen G.
We can play Rook B seven, threatening B eight if none of 7e7 is example.
And here.
The strongest might actually be Bishop G6.
We've got lots of friends that me ain't.
Yeah, that Shields doesn't need to shield anything.
It just takes a pawn and make sure that, you know, the pin's not going anywhere.
The king hasn't got H7 and we've got rugby.
Ain't so here.
Rugby Ace.
It's just hopeless.
Blacks are in huge trouble there, so it's an absolutely hopeless position.
Basically after Queen E4.
So Spassky tries not to have sex.
So yes, let's have sex.
Okay, so guess what Fischer plays here if I give you 5 seconds.
It's suppose the video won't play.
What would you play and why?
So there's a common attacking fame as almost there's a little leap of faith.
Intuitively, if you weaken the opponent's king, your pieces kind of get a promotion in value.
They've got other things to do to help him mating.
That's taking roles of covering key squares, killer sharks.
So the pieces actually go up in value because there's more fun for them on the chessboard.
So just bear that in mind.
We can weaken the king now with this exchange sacrifice.
So even though, you know, technically we've lost material, but our pieces have actually gone up in
value here and we're getting one pawn for the exchange anyway.
Black is totally tied down.
We have King G8 and our bishops C4 is played here with this big idea of Rook half seven supported by
that bishop and that pawn King HD and now Queen are four.
And black is just, you know, helpless here.
There's no spare pieces.
The whole team is working together here against that weakened King position.
That's another beautiful thing about attacking, you know, masterpieces.
It's like you look at these situations where the king's been compromised and, you know, Was there
a spare piece?
No, there's no spare piece.
Everything's in the attack here against the king.
So the game ended here and Spassky kind of got up and applauded Bobby Fischer and Fischer for was shocked.
And I thought, what a great sportsman.
Yeah, Spassky was a great sportsman and a great attacking player in his own right.
He's just known quite a lot for that classic 1972 match.
In this final position, if King G eight Rook takes H six, the attacks just really quite vicious here
where threatening things like Queen f6 now and rook H eight if rook takes E6.
Yeah, we're just going to play Queen f6 anyway.
We don't even need that material, you know, we can now win material here.
This is just brutal.
Okay, So yeah, it's a crushing end to the game.
So there's very interesting attacking ingredients through this game.
The winning of the opponents like Square Bishop, the temporary kind of the pawn sacrifice offer, gaining
the bishop to a good place, switching from the queen side to the side.
Another very subtle aspect of Fischer's play here is that he, you know, if you recognize you have
a bishop of our counterpart.
Maybe you can even enhance that by having pawns complementary to the bishop, which might prevent defensive
resources.
If this is the key diagonal.
If you think about it, it was the key diagonal in many variations.
If you think about what happened here.
Fisher creates a luxury situation for this ship without a counterpart by putting his pawns on dark squares
like this.
It's still going to be complimentary for this diagonal, and it shuts out F6 It shuts down E5, it shuts
down defensive resources with this F4 E5 structure so that he's made the structure even more favorable.
For using this diagonal lighter.
So it's a beautiful diagonal, just laying and white hair to be exploited with this structure, stopping
the use of F6, the structure stopping E5, it's just laying in wait for a battery.
Later, a battery queen and bishop battery joining forces together on that diagonal.
But first yeah the beautiful aspects of this so targeting E6 switching to this side of the board making
sure black hasn't got too much to do over this side of the board locking down counterplay with a force
just just just in case so locking down all accounts by vacating a nice central square for the queen.
Yeah, there's a lot of attacking gradients in one game.
It's an absolute masterpiece of a game, but you can see this beautiful diagonal.
Absolutely crushing stuff.
So yeah, have six.
When we weaken the opponents can, you know, concretely our pieces get promoted, try and get the pieces
as a team.
They've got a lot of things to do to work on, which are fun once we've weakened the opponent's king
like this.
But yeah, these other ingredients are playing their role.
The bishop, without the counterpart, the strong central pawn as well, of course, is dislocating
resources here from lack.
So yeah, an absolute masterpiece of a game.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as me.
It's worth revisiting these masterpieces from time to time and picking up some more and more nuances.
Like a good film you might revisit and pick up nuances.
Okay, that's so much.