Pawn sacrifice

Pawn Sacrifice



The greatest chess player of all time ( Russian Gary Kasparov ) has not got a film made on him , but American Bobby Fischer has one made on him---is this the privilege of being an American ??

Or may be it is only Fischer's story is one on which a film can be made---for it is equally a story of his weirdo behaviour , to the point where the psycho part of his personality overshadows his career and life .

The centerpiece of the film is of course the chess match between him and Soviet chess player Boris Spassky in Iceland , which is touted to be a prestige fight between the intelligence quotient of the citizens of superpower rivals---USA and the Soviet union . Henry Kissinger himself phones Fischer asking him to make the USA proud by winning against Spassky , saying that the worst chess player in the world has phoned the best !! Here too Fischer's crazy personality comes to the fore and he suspects that Russians are spying on him everywhere and refuses to come to the match for a while . His madness rubs of Spassky too , and Spassky also begins to have illusions of the american's spying on him....

So who wins the chess match ?? Not worth finding out by seeing the movie ; better find out on google....

Tobey Maguire has acted well as Fisher , but there is little else in the movie . Chess matches don't look interesting watching on the silver screen . There is a pathetic attempt at showing Fischer's romantic or rather sex life too---it is boring for even in bed he is more bothered about chess moves .

The film ends abruptly and we are told that Fisher went on to become more crazy and was sentenced for vagrancy .

verdict---not good .

I haven't seen it, but I am a chess lover, even though I suck at it. there's actually a debete who's the best. Fischer, Kasparov, Capablanca, Lasker..., but imho it's Morphy. (And in Fischer's too, I think). Fischer at his prime was better than Gary, imho. he was virtually invincible. And he was a madman, yes. I don't like him as a person, but I do Gary. I'll still watch it, maybe even rihgt now, I'm crazy about chess.

When I was much younger, I loved playing chess. That is, until I discovered Stratego and never touched a pawn since.

Check out the documentary "The World Against Bobby Fischer" - it's very interesting (hell, I might even watch it again); it's also On-Demand. A lot about chess, but also his personal life. I notice a few chessmasters are not very stable, perhaps it's the paranoia and not being able to detach the game from real life. His mother was being harassed because she was against the Vietnam War, and it seems to have left a trace on her son. He does talk about her a little. It's too bad that Fischer got into a hole just because he played in the former Yugoslavia. I think that was the start to an already rocky life, and his problems became exponentially worse, and just spiraled downward.

Nowadays there are so many computer programs, sounds like it's becoming more memorization than ever.

I read that even some programs on PCs play way better than any human ever.