Alexander Alekhine and Bobby Fischer were cowar...

The first wins the world championship, then spends the rest of his career running away from Capablanca, he even went so far as to refuse to play in tournaments that Capablanca attended. Fischer won the world championship, and then ran away from chess entirely rather then defend it. Both claimed that there were valid reasons for there running away, match conditions, money and so on, but it is very obvious when a man wants to play and when he is afraid.

k

This morning, I was out of coffee so I had my toast with milk only.

Don't mix your meds dude...

Originally posted by chrspayn
The first wins the world championship, then spends the rest of his career running away from Capablanca, he even went so far as to refuse to play in tournaments that Capablanca attended. Fischer won the world championship, and then ran away from chess entirely rather then defend it. Both claimed that there were valid reasons for there running away, match conditions, money and so on, but it is very obvious when a man wants to play and when he is afraid.

what about kramnik, then ? not giving kasparov a return match etc

There were personal problems between Alekhine and Capablanca. It was not all Alekhine's fault. Alekhine treated Capablanca the same way that Capablanca treated him. From there Capablanca insulted Alekhine. You have to know all of the story to know what was going on between those two players. I do not know what Fischer's problem was. Fischer was like that before during and after he became the champion. One though has it that Fischer was afraid that he would lose the title match. I think that Fischer would have retained it the first time and lost it in a second one.

Originally posted by chrspayn
The first wins the world championship, then spends the rest of his career running away from Capablanca, he even went so far as to refuse to play in tournaments that Capablanca attended. Fischer won the world championship, and then ran away from chess entirely rather then defend it. Both claimed that there were valid reasons for there running away, match conditions, money and so on, but it is very obvious when a man wants to play and when he is afraid.

Any particular reason you decided to rant here provocatively? We have a debates forum too.
Anyway, onto the rebuttal: Alekhine freely admitted that Capablanca was a better player, and the reason they did not play was because both of them were intense rivals. they wouldn't even sit at a board together, so it was not all Alekhine's fault, despite you clearly liking Capablanca from the looks of it.

Fischer disputed conditions all through his life and was not exactly afraid to say what he thought. If you knew anything about his matches with Spassky, before he became world champion, he famously disputed the match conditions. Then when he gave up chess, Morphy did too, going even further and saying P and M odds for everyone. To be fair, he can't have been that scared- he crushed Spassky and got a lot more criticism from leving chess than he would have by losing once.

Sheesh.

🙄

Even if its true... so what? At their level chess takes a great strain on the mental well being seemingly, so who can blame them for quitting while ahead?
The achievements they made will last much longer than the memory of them not repeating it.

Originally posted by Pigface1
Even if its true... so what? At their level chess takes a great strain on the mental well being seemingly, so who can blame them for quitting while ahead?
The achievements they made will last much longer than the memory of them not repeating it.

True Pigface. 😛

http://coloquio.com/famosos/capablanca.htm

A personal feud had grown between Alekhine and Capablanca with Alekhine refusing to play in the same tournaments as his old rival. At the Nottingham tournament in 1936 when the two men did meet they were never seen seated together at the board for more than a few seconds. Each man made his move and then got up and walked round. Capablanca died of a stroke in New York in 1942. Upon Alekhine's death four years later it was discovered that he had been working on a collection of Capablanca's best games and in the introduction he had written, "With his death, we have lost a very great chess genius whose like we shall never see again."

The same thing happens in boxing. I'm still ticked-off that Muhammad Ali never gave Chuck Wepner a rematch!

deep blue is a coward. IBM won't play another mathc against kasparov 🙁

not that kasparov would accept it... but since we're randomly calling out cowards on the basis of "they don't want to play" i thought maybe i'll call the machine a coward.

doesn't make much sense does it? a man turning down a match, doesn't make him a coward. And how can you call it "running from chess" fischer then was running from chess from the day he started it. Alekhine and Capablanca were both running from each other, so how can you call one a coward but not the other?

As for the "Alekhine examining Capablanca's best boards" what chess player do you know who doesn't examine the boards of their greatest rivals? Only a fool wouldn't.

Karpov on Fischer:

"I don't want to claim that he [Fischer] was afraid of me. Most probably, he was afraid of himself… he believed that the World Champion has no right to make mistakes. And then with such position, and with such a claim, you cannot play chess because you cannot avoid mistakes."

Bobby Fischer was not a coward. He was a perfectionist.

Originally posted by Cinco
Karpov on Fischer:

"I don't want to claim that he [Fischer] was afraid of me. Most probably, he was afraid of himself… he believed that the World Champion has no right to make mistakes. And then with such position, and with such a claim, you cannot play chess because you cannot avoid mistakes."

Bobby Fischer was not a coward. He was a perfectionist.

That was very good, and could well be true, it makes a lot of sense

Originally posted by Pigface1
That was very good, and could well be true, it makes a lot of sense

Yep. The original poster of this thread is burying his head in the sand, I think, trying to preserve any last scrap of credibility. 😞