Krogius on Spassky's preparations for the 1972 match with Fischer

One of the blogs over on Chess.com has a lengthy collection of excerpts from Nikolai Krogius about Boris Spassky's preparations for the match with Fischer. Krogius was one of Spassky's coaches at the time, and was also later his biographer. The quotes actually come from the biography, if I understand correctly. In any event, if you haven't read them before, they might prove interesting. Here's the link.

Hat tip: Brian Karen, via Dennis Monokroussus of The Chess Mind

One particular bit I'd like to point out. From Krogius:

As was agreed beforehand, I brought the data about the reasons of Fischer's and Spassky's losses and about peculiarities of their playing in important games I studied in Saratov. Interestingly enough, several years later I read an interesting book by grandmaster E. Mednis, How to Beat Bobby Fischer, published in the United States in 1974. Fischer's lost games were analyzed in the book. When reading Mednis' work, I would often encounter evaluations and reasonings similar to my own. So, in essence, Mednis and I did the same work independently. Sadly, my work didn't attract Spassky's attention and is now gathering dust in archives.

It would be interesting to compare Krogius's work to that of Mednis - and then to re-evaluate all of it with appropriate programs!

Another example of the need to fight to the bitter end

Dennis Monokroussos (can you tell he's a favorite chess writer of mine?) is now writing a column for a site called World Chess. His most recent column features a brilliant, if flawed, game between two obscure Dutch amateurs from the 1930s. In it, the player of the white pieces (Chris de Ronde) goes for a wild attacking idea while in deep time trouble. His opponent (Hendrik Kamstra) goes wrong in the complications, which isn't surprising given the difficulty of the game.

Read all about it there.

Comments, reviews, serendipity, and a complete anecdote!

One problem with running the blog is that I'm using g-mail for the attached email account, and for some reason I've had trouble getting g-mail accounts to work with Outlook. And since I don't check my g-mail account that often, I can miss comments on older posts.

Dennis Monokroussos reviews Informant's "Paramount" database so we don't have to!

Here's the link.

From his review:

The price is $199; a fair chunk of change, but very reasonable for what you're getting. (Think of how many books you'd need to buy to get your paws on 114,000 [annotated games & fragments].) To my mind it's a very good deal for serious players, fans of chess history and for correspondence players, so if you're in those categories you have my recommendation.

Read the whole thing to see how he arrives at his recommendation.

Monokroussos writes excellent product reviews, so if you're looking for stuff to buy his blog provides an excellent guide for quality material.

A promotional link to the product can be found here.