Bobby, Misha and a little laughter
Submitted by
Dozy on Tue, 07/01/2008 at 11:35pm.
When Goethe said, “Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at,” he wasn't thinking about chess, and he certainly wasn't thinking about Bobby Fischer and Mikhail Tal—but in the Candidates Tournament at Bled, 1959 laughter may well have determined the outcome of their game.
The following excerpt is taken from the autobiography, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.
In the diagrammed position, with white to move, Fischer wrote 22.Rae1. He wrote it not in his customary English notation but in algebraic—almost Russian,. Then he not very deftly pushed the scoresheet towards me. “He's asking for an endorsement,” I thought to myself, but how was I to react? To frown was impossible, if I smiled he would suspect trickery, and so I did the natural thing. I got up and began to calmly walk up and down the stage. I met Petrosian, made some joke with him, and he replied. The 15-year-old Fischer, who was essentially still only a large child, sat with a confused expression on his face, looking first at the front row of the spectators where his second was sitting, then at me.
Then he wrote down another move: 22 Qc6+ and, after 22...Rd7 we Rae1+ Be7 24 Rxf7 Qxf7 25 Qe6+ Kf8! 26 Qxd7 Qd6 I held on to my extra piece and adjourned the game in a won position.
When I later asked Fischer why he hadn't played 22 Rae1, he replied, “Well, you laughted when I wrote it down.”
There's a video available on U-Tube of Tal playing a very young Fischer. It's unclear whether it's of the game shown here—which was their fourth encounter—but it seems likely. There's an interview with Bobby dubbed across the video (with sub-titles in Dutch).