Word: petrosian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Pulitzer Prize winner, has written "Grandmasters" for a general audience, including failed patzers. It is an immensely entertaining book, lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings. Schonberg traces the history of grandmaster chess, beginning with Philidor in the 1740s and moving to Morphy, Steinitz, Marshall, Capablanca, Alekhine, contemporary Russians like Petrosian and Spassky, and ending with Bobby Fischer...
...winning the world title from Petrosian. "I never thought about making chess my life," he says. "It came suddenly upon me, and now the chess figures are like my relatives. I know the peculiarities of each one, but I do become discouraged when I see too much of them." For all his outward cool today, Spassky, like Fischer, was an intense, flashy competitor while he was on the way up. When he blundered away his advantage and lost one game in 1958, he wept openly. "You will understand Spassky better," says one friend, "if you know that his favorite writer...
...Aron Nimzovich used to stand on his head between moves to keep the vital juices flowing. The Yugoslav chess team travels with a portable sauna and a trainer who leads them in daily calisthenics. In the 24-game grind of a world title match, says former World Champion Tigran Petrosian, "chess may start out as an art or science, but in the end it is an athletic event...
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...
...took on Denmark's Bent Larsen, ranked second only to Bobby in the West, and stunned him by again winning six straight games. The 19 straight victories were without parallel in grand-master chess history. Declared Sovietski Sport: "A miracle has occurred!" Then nine months ago, Fischer tangled with Petrosian again in Buenos Aires and dropped him 61-21 to win the right to meet Spassky. After the Petrosian match, Fischer was reluctant to fly off in a private plane for a brief vacation. "I don't know about the plane," he said. "Suppose the Russians ... like, did something...