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51 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 26 Nov \ on: Bobby Fischer and Bitcoin bitcoin
2 tangential items:
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Bobby Fisher came to "hate" chess and publicly disavow it after the rise of chess analysis software. He claimed it had turned the game into pure memorization of openings...this prompted him to create whats known as "960 chess" (or Fisher Random Opening). This randomized the placement of the pieces before the game started to force players to play without memorizing openings.
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Even given that he largely began to disavow chess and stopped playing publicly...the rumor is that he still occasionally appeared online to play games under random pseudonym. The most famous was the "Mjolnir" games on the old ICC platform in early 2000s. The funniest / most crazy of these games was where he opened by moving the king essentially in a circle....extremely unconventional....nonetheless he was able to force white to resign.
Fischer Random is starting to gain a bit of traction now it seems. At the top level players are apparently burned out on the enormous amount of opening study needed to compete in tournaments. Personally I find regular chess hard enough, and am usually out of opening prep by the second move!
I also read that rumor about him playing online, but I don't think it's true. He barely played (regular) chess in his later years and although he would regularly analyze games (mainly to "prove" one of this pet conspiracy theories that the Karpov Kasparov world championship matches had been entirely prearranged) he always used an analog set, usually a leather pocket set he carried around with him. So I don't believe Bobby ever embraced or so much as entertained using computers for chess.
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