My 60 Memorable Games
Encyclopedia
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
book by Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...
, first published in 1969. It is a collection of his games dating from the 1957 New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
Open to the 1967 Sousse
Sousse
Sousse is a city in Tunisia. Located 140 km south of the capital Tunis, the city has 173,047 inhabitants . Sousse is in the central-east of the country, on the Gulf of Hammamet, which is a part of the Mediterranean Sea. The name may be of Berber origin: similar names are found in Libya and in...
Interzonal
Interzonal
Interzonal chess tournaments were tournaments organized by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, and were a stage in the triennial World Chess Championship cycle.- Zonal tournaments :...
. Unlike many players' anthologies, which are often titled My Best Games and include only victories, My 60 Memorable Games includes nine draws and three losses. It has been described as a "classic of objective and painstaking analysis" and is regarded as one of the great pieces of chess literature.
The book was originally published in descriptive notation
Descriptive chess notation
Descriptive notation is a notation for recording chess games, and at one time was the most popular notation in English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries , . It was used in Europe until it was superseded by abbreviated algebraic notation, which was introduced by Philipp Stamma in 1737...
. An algebraic notation
Algebraic chess notation
Algebraic notation is a method for recording and describing the moves in a game of chess. It is now standard among all chess organizations and most books, magazines, and newspapers...
version in 1995 caused some controversy in the chess world because of the many other changes made to the text, with Fischer himself denouncing the edition. In 2008 a reissue of Fischer's original text was published, the only changes being the updating to algebraic notation and the correcting of typographical error
Typographical error
A typographical error is a mistake made in, originally, the manual type-setting of printed material, or more recently, the typing process. The term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but usually excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors...
s, notation mistakes, and the erroneous last few moves of game 17 (versus Mikhail Tal
Mikhail Tal
Mikhail Tal was a Soviet–Latvian chess player, a Grandmaster, and the eighth World Chess Champion.Widely regarded as a creative genius, and the best attacking player of all time, he played a daring, combinatorial style. His play was known above all for improvisation and unpredictability....
).
Writing
The book had been planned for some time, to be published by Simon & SchusterSimon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
. Its first title was to be Bobby Fischer's Best Games of Chess. Fischer first announced it would appear "after my match with Botvinnik
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while...
" (then World Champion
World Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....
), an event first suggested for 1962 and again in the mid 1960s but which never took place. Fischer then added more games, and retitled it My Memorable Games - 52 Tournament Games. (At one time it was also titled My Life in Chess: 52 Memorable Games.) At that point the collection ended at the Piatigorsky Cup
Piatigorsky Cup
The Piatigorsky Cup was a triennial series of double round-robin grandmaster chess tournaments held in the United States in the 1960s. Sponsored by the Piatigorsky Foundation, only two events were held, in 1963 and 1966. The Piatigorsky Cups were the strongest U.S. chess tournaments since New...
in 1966. However he then had an abrupt change of heart and decided not to publish the book at all, and asked to be released from his contract. It was suggested that he did not want to reveal all his secrets, as the book has lengthy annotations and analysis of different possible variations of his games. In 1968 he changed his mind and decided to go ahead with publication. His friend and colleague Grandmaster Larry Evans
Larry Evans
For the football player of the same name, see Larry Evans .Larry Melvyn Evans was an American chess grandmaster, author, and journalist. He won or shared the U.S. Chess Championship five times and the U.S. Open Chess Championship four times...
, who helped in an editorial capacity and also wrote introductions to all the games, has said this was because Fischer felt philosophically that "the world was coming to an end anyway" and he might as well make some money. Fischer thought that the Rapture
Rapture
The rapture is a reference to the "being caught up" referred to in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the "dead in Christ" and "we who are alive and remain" will be caught up in the clouds to meet "the Lord"....
was coming soon. Fischer continued to revise the manuscript and added eight more games, also changing the title to My Memorable Games – 60 Tournament Struggles before settling on the final name.
Games
The collection begins in 1957, omitting the famous "Game of the Century" against Donald ByrneDonald Byrne
Donald Byrne was one of the USA's strongest chess players during the 1950s and 1960s.Born in New York City, he won the U.S. Open Chess Championship in 1953, was awarded the International Master title by FIDE in 1962, and played for or captained five U.S. Chess Olympiad teams between 1962 and 1972...
in 1956 (this game had been included in a small, lightly annotated work called Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess, published in 1959). The three losses are to Tal
Mikhail Tal
Mikhail Tal was a Soviet–Latvian chess player, a Grandmaster, and the eighth World Chess Champion.Widely regarded as a creative genius, and the best attacking player of all time, he played a daring, combinatorial style. His play was known above all for improvisation and unpredictability....
at the Candidates Tournament
Candidates Tournament
The Candidates Tournament is a chess tournament organized by the world chess federation FIDE since 1950, as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship...
1959, Spassky
Boris Spassky
Boris Vasilievich Spassky is a Soviet-French chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from late 1969 to 1972...
at Mar del Plata 1960, and Geller
Efim Geller
Efim Petrovich Geller was a Soviet chess player and world-class grandmaster at his peak. He won the Soviet Championship twice and was a Candidate for the World Championship on six occasions...
at Skopje
Skopje
Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...
1967. Among the draws are his only encounter with World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while...
, at the 1962 Varna
Varna
Varna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, with a population of 334,870 inhabitants according to Census 2011...
Olympiad
15th Chess Olympiad
The 15th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between September 15 and October 10, 1962, in Varna, Bulgaria.-References:* OlimpBase...
. This game contains the longest piece of analysis in the book, with Fischer concluding that he missed a win in the endgame. Botvinnik later disputed this, with a refutation from one of his chess school pupils, 13 year old Garry Kasparov
Garry Kasparov
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....
. This is one of the few examples of Fischer's analysis being questioned. Among the wins are his first defeat of a Soviet Grandmaster, Paul Keres
Paul Keres
Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....
at Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
1959, and his 21 move victory as Black over Robert Byrne at the 1963/64 US Championship. There are seven games from his first Candidates tournament in 1959, but only two from his second at Curaçao 1962
World Chess Championship 1963
At the World Chess Championship 1963 Tigran Petrosian narrowly qualified to challenge Mikhail Botvinnik for the World Chess Championship, and then won the match to become the ninth World Chess Champion...
. All the games were played under tournament conditions except for a friendly game at the home of Reuben Fine
Reuben Fine
Reuben Fine was one of the strongest chess players in the world from the early 1930s through the 1940s, an International Grandmaster, psychologist, university professor, and author of many books on both chess and psychology.Fine won five medals in three chess Olympiads. Fine won the U.S...
in 1963 and a win from Fischer's 1964 simultaneous exhibition
Simultaneous exhibition
A simultaneous exhibition or simultaneous display is a board game exhibition in which one player plays multiple games at a time with a number of other players. Such an exhibition is often referred to simply as a "simul".In a regular simul, no chess clocks are used...
tour of the US.
Fischer makes several observations about his opponent's habits and reaction to his moves. In the opening game he writes that "Sherwin
James Sherwin
James Terry Sherwin is an American corporate executive and International Master in chess.Born in New York City in 1933, Sherwin attended Stuyvesant High School, Columbia College and Columbia Law School. He graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Officer Candidate School in 1956 and later...
slid the rook with his pinky, as if to emphasize the cunning of this mysterious move." In another game he recalls that "Petrosian
Tigran Petrosian
Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian was a Soviet-Armenian grandmaster, and World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. He was nicknamed "Iron Tigran" due to his playing style because of his almost impenetrable defence, which emphasised safety above all else...
and Tal both happened to stroll by the board at this point. Petrosian made a wry face which looked to me like 'Can Black do this and live?'"
He also gives his opinions on openings
Chess opening
A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...
, mentioning that he "never opened with the queen's pawn - on principle" and that moving the king's pawn
King's Pawn Game
The King's Pawn Game is any chess opening starting with the move:White opens with the most popular of the twenty possible opening moves. Though effective in winning for White , it is not as successful as the four next most common openings for White: 1.d4 , 1.Nf3 , 1.c4 , and 1.g3...
was "best by test".
Reception
My 60 Memorable Games was enthusiastically received by the chess community, and was an immediate success. A review in British Chess MagazineBritish Chess Magazine
British Chess Magazine is the world's oldest chess magazine in continuous publication. First published in January 1881, it has appeared at monthly intervals ever since. It is frequently known in the chess world as BCM....
in December 1969 called it "a great book without a doubt, and (it) can go straight on the shelf alongside Alekhine
Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
and Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch was one of the strongest chess players and most influential chess teachers of the late 19th century and early 20th century....
and fear no comparisons." Upon its reissue in 1995 the same magazine suggested it could be the best chess book ever written. Fischer was praised for his honesty, and the depth and accuracy of his annotations. It has had a great influence on today's top players. Peter Biyiasas
Peter Biyiasas
Peter Biyiasas is a Canadian chess grandmaster. He was Canadian champion in 1972 and 1975, represented Canada with fine success on four Olympiad teams, played in two Interzonals. He moved to the United States in 1979, settling in California. He has been retired from competitive play since the...
became an International Master by studying only two books: Rook Endings by Levenfish
Grigory Levenfish
Grigory Yakovlevich Levenfish was a leading Jewish Russian chess grandmaster of the 1920s and 1930s. He was twice Soviet champion - in 1934 and 1937. In 1937 he tied a match against future world champion Mikhail Botvinnik...
and Smyslov
Vasily Smyslov
Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster, and was World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958. He was a Candidate for the World Chess Championship on eight occasions . Smyslov was twice equal first at the Soviet Championship , and his total of 17 Chess Olympiad medals won...
(see chess endgame literature#Rook endings), and My 60 Memorable Games. It was also Grandmaster Bu Xiangzhi
Bu Xiangzhi
Bu Xiangzhi is a Chinese chess grandmaster. In 1999, he became China's 10th Grandmaster at the age of 13 years, 10 months, 13 days, at the time the youngest in history. In April 2008, Bu and Ni Hua became the second and third Chinese players to pass the 2700 Elo rating line, after Wang Yue...
's first chess book. He said, "the games were fantastic."
Unauthorised Russian version
The Russian edition of the book appeared in 1972, without Fischer's permission and without regard for copyrightCopyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
laws. This was standard Soviet practice at the time. The translator had trouble with some of Fischer's American colloquialisms and also omitted several statements that were felt to be anti-Soviet. The edition included a supplementary article assessing Fischer's playing style, written by Grandmaster Igor Zaitsev
Igor Zaitsev
Igor Arkadyevich Zaitsev is a Russian grandmaster of chess. He is of Armenian descent.-Early life and family:He was born in Ramenskoe, a town outside Moscow...
. At one of the press conferences for his 1992 rematch with Boris Spassky
Boris Spassky
Boris Vasilievich Spassky is a Soviet-French chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from late 1969 to 1972...
, Fischer said 50,000 copies had been printed in the USSR and he "hadn't got a penny" from them. He answered speculation about a match with the then World Champion Garry Kasparov
Garry Kasparov
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....
by saying nothing could take place until the Russian authorities had paid him all the royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
he felt he was owed. This edition was one of Kasparov's first chess books.
Batsford controversy
British publisher BatsfordAnova Books
Anova Books is a UK-based publishing company founded in 2005, with the acquisition of the Chrysalis Books Group from the Chrysalis Group. Since its inception, the firm has acquired or created several other imprints...
released a new edition of My 60 Memorable Games in 1995. Chess writer and Grandmaster John Nunn
John Nunn
John Denis Martin Nunn is one of England's strongest chess players and once belonged to the world's top ten. He is also a three times world champion in chess problem solving, a chess writer and publisher, and a mathematician....
converted the original descriptive chess notation
Descriptive chess notation
Descriptive notation is a notation for recording chess games, and at one time was the most popular notation in English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries , . It was used in Europe until it was superseded by abbreviated algebraic notation, which was introduced by Philipp Stamma in 1737...
to modern algebraic notation
Algebraic chess notation
Algebraic notation is a method for recording and describing the moves in a game of chess. It is now standard among all chess organizations and most books, magazines, and newspapers...
using a computer program. At a press conference in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
in June 1996, Fischer denounced the new edition, accusing Batsford of "changing everything in my book, the notation, the format, the pages, the analysis... and without paying royalties." Batsford responded that they had purchased the rights to the book legally from Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
, and pointed out that they had corrected many of the ambiguities in the descriptive notation of the moves. However, it emerged that they had added faulty analysis to one game, incorrectly believing Fischer had overlooked a mate
Checkmate
Checkmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...
in four moves.
Chess historian Edward Winter discovered that there had also been over 570 textual changes. He wrote in CHESS magazine
CHESS magazine
CHESS magazine , also called CHESS and previously called CHESS Monthly, is a chess magazine published monthly in the UK by Chess and Bridge Limited. CHESS was founded by Baruch Harold Wood in 1935 in Sutton Coldfield. Wood edited it until 1988, when it was taken over by Pergamon Press and changed...
that "... entire notes of Fischer’s had been omitted, individual words had been deleted, other words had been added", and "Fischer’s wording had simply been changed without justification". Grandmaster Hans Ree
Hans Ree
Hans Ree is a Dutch Grandmaster of chess and is a columnist and chess writer for the NRC Handelsblad. He contributes to the leading chess magazines New In Chess and ChessCafe.com...
stated that "[i]n the Netherlands such changes constitute a criminal offense that could theoretically lead to a prison sentence. ... Fischer had been quite right in his anger." This edition is now out of print
Out of print
Out of print refers to an item, typically a book , but can include any print or visual media or sound recording, that is in the state of no longer being published....
, and in 2008, Batsford reissued the book using Fischer's original words. Batsford claimed that the only change made was the conversion to algebraic notation, although a review of the 2008 edition found that several typographical error
Typographical error
A typographical error is a mistake made in, originally, the manual type-setting of printed material, or more recently, the typing process. The term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but usually excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors...
s and notation mistakes have also been corrected.
My 61 Memorable Games hoax
In December 2007 copies of an apparently pirated updated edition entitled My 61 Memorable Games appeared for sale on eBayEBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
. It contained a new foreword supposedly written by Fischer, but his involvement was unclear, and eBay soon stepped in to end the auction. Larry Evans
Larry Evans
For the football player of the same name, see Larry Evans .Larry Melvyn Evans was an American chess grandmaster, author, and journalist. He won or shared the U.S. Chess Championship five times and the U.S. Open Chess Championship four times...
originally thought it was possible that it was a pirated version of a genuine Fischer manuscript, but in April 2008 concluded it was a hoax.
Editions
- The original hardback US edition was published in January 1969 by Simon & Schuster, 384 pages. Several paperback reprints were published. Now out of print.
- A UK paperback edition was published on 4 April 1972 by Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-09987-4. Now out of print.
- The unauthorized Russian version in 1972 (see above).
- The widely criticised Batsford algebraic edition (see above), 240 pages, ISBN 0-7134-7812-8, ISBN 978-0-7134-7812-9. It was released as part of their Algebraic Classics series on 5 February 1995 and is now out of print.
- A reissued edition was published by BatsfordAnova BooksAnova Books is a UK-based publishing company founded in 2005, with the acquisition of the Chrysalis Books Group from the Chrysalis Group. Since its inception, the firm has acquired or created several other imprints...
in 2008 in paperback, 384 pages, ISBN 978-1-906388-30-0. The text of this edition is the same as the original edition except for the conversion to algebraic notation and the correction of several typographical errorTypographical errorA typographical error is a mistake made in, originally, the manual type-setting of printed material, or more recently, the typing process. The term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but usually excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors...
s and notation mistakes. The layout is very similar to the original. The text is copyrighted by Fischer, dated 1969, 1972, 1995, and 2008.