Bobby Fischer's most instructive games of Chess 1956-1962

Learn about Bobby Fischer's evolving opening repertoire, tactics, and common strategies

In this course, Kingscrusher goes over Bobby Fischer's earlier career from when Fischer became very strong which was at the time of the "Game of the Century" game, and examines some of the more fun and instructive games Fischer played.

The course structures itself on Fischer's major tournaments during the time period 1956-1962 and tries to extract as much "instructive juice" from each and every game. The course also tracks historically any changes in Fischer's opening repertoire, and depth of tactics, strategy, and endgame technique.

Fischer has some of the most instructive games of any World chess champion and was in an era where Opening theory and Chess Engines were not so highly evolved. So quite often players were improvising more and the actual battle starting early in the games for instructive moments to learn from. Fischer's accuracy, when checked with modern engines, is often without any major errors - and for this reason, perhaps the Soviet Chess Grandmasters often referred to Fischer as a computer! This should be taken as a complement for Fischer's accuracy and determination to win every game. On certain statistical polls Fischer comes up as one of the most accurate world chess champions especially when factoring in the complexity of positions, comes even ahead of Capablanca for overall engine-like accuracy.

Fischer's Opening systems

Bobby Fischer had a specific system early on in his career which he used - The King's Indian Attack. This seemed to serve him very well and helped him win his first US Chess Championship - the first of many US championships he would win. Fischer gradually started to become more theoretical with 1.e4 and go into various specific variations of the Sicilian defence, Caro-Kann or other defences without resorting to the Kings Indian attack setup. In particular the Russians feared Fischer so much on the White side of a Sicilian defence with Bc4 that they would often use the Caro-Kann instead of the Sicilian defence against him!. 

With Black, the Sicilian Najdorf vs 1.e4 is still very popular at the modern Grandmaster level, and Fischer's handling of the Sicilian Defence is highly instructive.

With black against 1.d4 Fischer used quite often the King's Indian defence but was also playing in this period the Nimzo indian defence and other systems as well.

Fischer's Middlegame tactics and strategies

Regarded as a "computer" by the Russians, Fischer's tactics are sometimes absolutely brilliant and "computer-like!". So much so that even grandmasters commentating expect Fischer to resign on occasion only for Fischer's opponent to resign abruptly a few moves later like in a classic game vs Byrne. Fischer is able to see the more "theoretical downsides" that are extremely subtle and often by force bring these to the surface to expose those downsides in reality.

Fischer's endgames

Fischer's will to win gives us great exposure in how to squeeze out wins from even very small advantages. Fischer would sometimes play out games across multiple adjournments even against feel US players like Sherwin when playing abroad. Fischer would basically take no prisoners and rarely offer draws. In trying to extract the maximum result from each and every game, we get to witness often highly instructive endgame technique, and especially where Fischer was renowned such as in Bishop vs Knight endgames. Many of Fischer's opponents make instructive blunders in seemingly innocuous rook and pawn endgames where Fischer's finesse and focus finds the narrow path to victories quite frequently even in seemingly drawish rook and pawn endgames.