Traps, Tricks & Misstakes: Facing Novelties
The city of Bled (in the former Yugoslavia) held in 1931 a major chess tournament where fourteen leading chess masters took part in a double Round-Robin competition. Alexander Alekhine was the winner with 20,5 points out of 26. Capablanca did not take part because Alekhine, using his position as a World Chess Champion, kept the Cuban master out of the event.
In 1961, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of that event, another strong tournament took place in Bled. The best players in the world took part in the event. Only Botvinnik, Smyslov, Reshevsky, and Euwe declined to participate.
But the sensation was the 18-year-old American genius, Bobby Fischer. Although he didn’t win the tournament, he finished in an amazing second place with a score of 13,5 out of 19. Besides that, he was the only undefeated player and the only one who defeated Tal in their individual match. Fischer had a tremendous score against the Soviet masters, winning to Tahl, Petrosian, Geller, and drawing with Keres.
Today’s game is the match that Fischer played against Geller, whom he defeated in only 22 moves. Geller chose a novelty in an aggressive line in the Ruy Lopez, trying to catch his young opponent off balance. However, the American found the refutation and not only won but demolished his rival’s position. Fischer entered a line considered inferior at that time, allowing the pin of his kingside knight.
The game below contains Fischer’s own comments:
Chess players accepted that the present game was the refutation of the variation played by Geller.
Fischer’s ideas about chess were very original. He always approached any position with a critical sense, no matter if it had a general approvement.
Maybe you play chess but are unable to attend a local club. If that is your case, then join our virtual Chess.com club. On our site, we regularly play online tournaments and team matches. More than 1120 members enjoy that chance and new players join every week. We have new tournaments scheduled for the coming months waiting for players! Join now! Additionally, we have a puzzle section and we have recently started to practice the variant of ‘Vote Chess’. Although not very popular, ‘Vote Chess’ is an effective educational tool for learning together.
