Word: pawning
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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CHESSMANSHIP. The late Stephen Potter, Field Martial of Gamesmanship, conceived this classic chess ploy before Bobby Fischer pushed his first pawn. Challenged, the Summer Gamesman makes three random moves and resigns...
...exciting, not only because both programs were undefeated, but also because it amounted to a clash between two different styles. The Northwestern program, named Chess 3.5, looked ahead 4 ply at most. However, its evaluation function was very sophisticated, and it assessed positions on the basis of material, pawn structure, control of the center, and safety of the king. The other program, Tech, could look ahead up to 13 ply. It was able to evaluate so many positions because the only criterion was material superiority, and it was not bogged down by other positional considerations. The programs battled...
Sure enough, battling Boris attacked benevolent Bobby with a vengeance in the eleventh game. Fischer, playing black, followed the same risky, pawn-snatching opening that he had got away with in the seventh game, apparently believing that Spassky and his team of analysts had not yet worked out a suitable reply. Fischer was wrong. On the 25th move, Bobby suffered the humiliation of having his ambushed queen cut down by a lowly pawn. Though hopelessly lost, he played on for six more moves before resigning. "Fischer has never been knocked out as he was by Spassky," gloated one Soviet grand...
...called father of modern chess, suffered from a delusion in his later years that he could place a telephone call without wire or receiver, as well as move chess pieces at will by emitting electrical currents. He also claimed to be in touch with God, whom he offered a pawn handicap and the first move in a showdown chess match. He died a charity patient...
Come back he did. On a March afternoon in 1970, he strode resolutely across the stage of the Dom Sindikata Theater in Belgrade, sat down behind two ranks of white chessmen, reached across the table and shook hands with former World Champion Petrosian, shoved the king's pawn two squares forward, punched the button on the dual-faced time clock, pulled a Parker Jotter from inside his black and white checked Hong Kong suit, scribbled the notation PK4 on his score sheet and dug in. Nearly five hours and 39 moves later, Petrosian surveyed the shattered remains of his Caro...