Jim West On Chess: 15 Years Ago Today

Sunday, September 2, 2007

15 Years Ago Today

On September 2, 1992, Bobby Fischer returned to competitive chess after a 20-years absence with a win against Boris Spassky in game 1 of their Revenge Match of the 20th Century.

I remember an international master at the Marshall Chess Club using the words "a real Rip Van Winkle story" in describing Fischer's comeback.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov