Bobby Fischer Gives Dick Cavett A Chess Crash Course | The Dick Cavett Show

this is a chess board and i i know you can't imagine a person not knowing what it all means can you give someone a crash lesson okay what do you want to know uh i'd like i'd like to know uh what these things are called no i know all that well we looked at the pawns knight bishop queen king okay yeah and porn moves like one two the first move captures diagonally yeah okay that's the pawns oh it becomes a queen when you reach the end yeah or a knight or a rook or a bishop uh cannot become a king cannot stay a point okay okay got it a few other little things with points okay knights move like like it's kind of like an l you see from here they go here yeah okay they move diagonally like so you can't jump over things you handle them beautifully thank you now kings move one square in any direction but generally you keep the king way back until the end game because it's if you lose the king you lose the game yeah that's what that's where it's at it's what about now let's see the queen is the most powerful piece it moves like a bishop well first time you come to the rook the rook moves like this straight any anything always straight can't jump queen moves like a bishop yeah like so and like a rook it's a very powerful piece it has tremendous scope yeah the chop is falling off at once as i understand at the end of your match with petrossian his uh his something or other turned into queens is that do you know what i'm saying oh well i was going to see and when we play top level chess once you once you're dead lost you don't drag it out to the bitter end to the checkmate you resign it's kind of a gentlemanly thing to do could he beat you in this sense that if you tie he retains the title doesn't he the next match with spassky right yeah so uh if he elects to turn it into a draw all down the line then does he retain the title right yeah would a world champion do that sure he would yeah yeah but i'm not gonna let him actually oh god for the people now it's silly to waste your time giving me an elementary lesson in chess could you show for the people who really know the game what the last moments of the petrosian match were and what they meant or can you remember that yeah yeah well that was very simplified let's see i don't know what to do with it either nothing's gone are you working from a picture in your head of what it was like right yeah here we go this was it and i pl and it was my move here and i played was my move here yeah i went here that was the final position and what did that do to everything else well the idea i was going to push this pawn down here and get a queen and then i was going to checkmate him so all he couldn't do much i have i have four pawns for the piece he's got a knight that's an opponent i have five pawns so it's four points for compensation for the knight and it's frankly impossible to stop this pawn for example he could go here hitting this pawn right can you see a way that he could have won this oh no here's where he gave up so it was a couple moves before this that he still had a possibility of winning was it or how many moves ahead of this well he was he was dead lost for uh half a dozen moves before this but you know when did he realize it well you know it's hard to give up you know it's a big game it's just for the yeah to play for the world title do you have a hunch that you knew he was done before he did no we both knew you see it on the same both knew it it was just kind of a heartbreaking loss for him and he wanted to drink it out of him yeah wipe that smile off your feet did he have to go to a resort in the black sea for a week after this to recover no as a matter of fact they didn't send them away anywhere you know i thought people were talking about that but he played a big tournament went back to russia playing the big tournament and he beat boris baskey in a chess game now when i'm going to play next where does that put him if he beats spassky uh well it wasn't for the wasn't a part of this official deal he just beat him in a friendly place he wasn't too friendly you beat him a real game ralph was telling me that they take physical examinations for the matches yeah the interesting thing is why is it that is it generally believed that if you hit 40 or 43 you're going downhill it's a young man's game and it's tremendous physical strength right i mean the concentration you're sitting there for hour after hour if you have a just you know when you get a little older you have these momentary mental lapses or you just weaken you don't you can't give it all you've got that's all it just takes this much just to miscalculate one little thing in your mind you know and what's the peak period for example when do you think you'll reach your peak in terms of 80. well i'm different i mean i i tend to keep playing for a long time what's your age right now 28 28 you know i intend to be real good for another 30 years but generally speaking they go down about 40. ordinary people yeah okay who it says here are all chess masters egomaniacs oh yeah uh it is it must be true though i mean it must be because it involves your whole uh life if you're a chess master you don't do anything else dude this is true it does attract an egocentric crowd you know yeah it's just you and the board and your opponent and trying to prove something yeah is there a finite number of possible chess games uh they say there is a thing i don't know something with two numbers and then i don't know how many 100 zeros or something i don't know but there must be because there's a limited number of squares and there can only be so many right is that right is that true or false is there a fallacy in that i think there is a limited number but uh yeah yeah it's more than a mind can fathom do you think you'll ever show uh an a international chess uh contest on network television you think you'll ever reach that point i think so i mean in this country uh for example this series of matches i played in the first match was like a thousand dollars or something like that second match i got two thousand the third match i got seven thousand five hundred the next match if i win i'm gonna give a ninety two thousand dollars for the winner [ __ ] so there definitely seems to be a lot of interest being generated i think anything is possible what are you going to do if they hold you to three hours you know so well we'll just change footballing we'll change the time limit um when you've taken intelligence tests in school what parts of them do you score highest on um i don't know they never you know they never gave me the uh they never take the standard time i think i took it but they never give you the report yeah i think i was good with these um had these little square boxes and puzzles and this kind of thing those things where they say how many sides are not showing on this thing they were giving me this they're giving me numbers and telling me to tell them backwards and they were amazing i'm shooting them off backwards fast yeah are you good at anagrams for any reason you know i mean if i say plates do you can you immediately reform those letters into five other words oh no i can't i saw someone who's a some basketball player on tv doing that a few months ago or was it probably me no i have that weird thing i if you say plates i see petals and pleats and pastel and staple and it's a weird gift is not it's not worth anything on the market obviously i don't know why i have that and i wondered if that would translate into this because i'm not very good at spatial relations but i apparently can rearrange letters in my head for some quirky reason that's probably a onset of schizophrenia i don't know but you don't have to you're not particularly good at word games uh not particularly i mean i'm really special i don't really care too much about these things yeah yeah sorry i talked about it [Music] you

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 896,788

Keywords: The Dick Cavett Show, Talk Show, Musician, Celebrities, Dick Cavett, United States, Chat Show, Interview, Bobby Fischer, chess, grandmaster, Ralph Nader, Sandy Duncan, 4th January 1972, #chess, #thedickcavettshow, Boris Spassky, Soviet Union, America, Chess championship, world chess championship 1972, Laugardalshöll arena, Match of the Century, Iceland, Reykjavík, The applause, how to play chess, learn chess, Bobby Fischer teaches, youngest grandmaster, cold war, Tigran Petrosian

Id: NhOZ1VFK4qo

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Fischer was pretty articulate. It's enjoyable to listen to him speak. I don't think there are many videos of him like this. Too bad he grew into such a terrible piece of shit later in life.

[u/[deleted]]

Greatest American Chess player became a a raging nazi. Greatest Soviet Chess player became a pro-west Democrat. (Kasparov)

[u/BOTNS_posting]

I always forget just how thick his accent was

[u/MyNameDebbie]

This looks like he brought his own Dubrovnik Chess Set. Neat! I have the replica of it. Very heavy pieces.

[u/arfbrookwood]

Nader!

[u/Irishane]

He sounds like Rocky....but for chess

[u/Interesting-RateAD]

I don't know he seems kind of an asshole here already?