Fischer's Brutal Attack | His Best Ever Games!

These two brothers achieved something truly special. They both played an immortal chess game against Fischer. Let me show you how this family tragedy happened. Starting with the older brother, Robert Byrne, who's playing right here against Fischer in the US Chess Championship. And what's interesting about this championship is that Fischer won it with a perfect score, winning 11 games out of 11. And by the way, you might not know about this, but if you need some extra cash, there is basically a get rich quick thing. I never thought I'd share one, but all you gotta do is to win the US Championship with a perfect score, and you'll be awarded with a Fischer's prize of $64,000. That's it. Now back to the game. So far, we've got quite a symmetric setup. It's quite dry, and then Fischer is getting ready to develop his light square bishop while he's trying the same thing. Both sides develop their bishops actively. Now Fischer goes Rook to e8, and the Rook sidesteps this pressure from White's dark square bishop. White goes Queen to d2, completing the development, and now Fischer strikes in the center with Pawn to e5, putting some pressure to this Pawn, or maybe getting ready to push the Pawn forward and gain some space. White trades, Knight recaptures, and now White goes Rook to d1, the move which later was criticized a lot, but of course, it's easy to be smart in hindsight. But here, the move makes a lot of sense. The Rook from here attacks this Pawn, and also, the Rook is getting away from this pin from the Bishop. Therefore, the move Rook to d1 definitely makes a lot of sense. And by the way, the White player is not just some random noob. Later, he became also the U.S. champion, and he represented the U.S. in multiple Olympics, I think in nine, and got medals in seven of them. Therefore, he's definitely a very experienced player. Now Fischer goes Knight to d3. In chess, this style in the third rank is known as an octopus, because from here, it just annoys your opponent so much, controlling so many squares into his territory, that it's pretty much unbearable for your opponent to keep this Knight right there. And White goes Qc2, trying to attack the Knight and force it to move. And this is exactly what Fischer did, but probably not in the way White expected. Instead of retreating the Knight, Black sacrificed it on f2, which is a very interesting sacrifice, because the continuation is totally not obvious. Initially, White captures the Knight. Fischer continues with Knight to g4. So far, that's pretty clear. Okay, what do you do next? The king retreated back. The Knight captures the spawn on e3, this time with a double attack to the Queen and Rook. It's interestingly that Fischer very quickly replaced one octopus by the other one. Now White goes Qd2, and White expected Black to capture the Rook, to this White would recapture, and it leads to an approximately equal position, but definitely White has no issues there. But suddenly, instead of capturing the Rook, Fischer captured this bishop on g2. Now White recaptures, and at the end of the day, we see that White is up a piece. He's got three minor pieces versus two minor pieces of Black. And what's the point? Like, yes, the king is exposed, but there are no Black pieces in any near proximity to the king, and therefore, the idea behind Fischer's sacrifice is quite unclear. But Fischer continues playing unexpected moves. This time, he pushed the pawn forward, attacking the Knight, and the move would be very decent to play, but the pawn can simply be captured. White's got a lot of pieces there supporting this Knight. And it's again unclear what is Black even trying to accomplish here by sacrificing all this material. Now Fischer continues with Bb7+, the king has a bunch of squares where to go to, but here White realizes the first danger. If the king just comes back to g1, which he didn't in the game, because in this case, Black had a nice follow-up. He would first trade on d4, Bd4+, White recaptures, but now, instead of just keep trading everything on d4, which would just leave White with an extra piece in a winning endgame, there was a better move which Fischer would play. I'll give you a couple seconds to find it by yourself. It's the move Re1, sacrificing the rook and deflecting this rook from d1. From here, it guards the queen, but after the rook is accepted, not anymore. Now Qxd4 comes with another double attack, and now Black is totally winning. That's why in the actual game, Bern moved the king not to g1, but to a better square, Kf1, and this prevents this combination. So just to show you real quick, if Black tries doing this whole thing once again with Re1, that wouldn't make any sense, because the king would capture himself, and White would be just winning. Therefore, there was another really interesting moment that happened right here. At this point, the Grandmaster, who commented this game in another room for spectators, claimed that White has won game. He is up a piece, and it's unclear how Black can continue his attack. And then it came down that the game actually ended. People were like, hey, did Fischer resign? But then it turned out that it's the opposite. He played a quiet move, Qd7, and White resigned. Again, it's very funny that up to the very end, people could not even comprehend what is Fischer doing. You know, when Tal sacrificed material, it was at least clear that he's hunting the opponent's king. But in this game, Fischer sacrificed something, but all his pieces are so far away from the White king, that it's totally unclear what is he even trying to achieve. But here's the main line of the combination. If White tried playing Qf2 to cover up the king, then from here, the queen can go Qh3. That's the whole point of this quiet move. Qh3 delivers the check. Notice that we've got this bishop. Therefore, White can't cover with the queen. Kg1 is forced. And at this point, there is a winning combo for Black. I'll give you a couple seconds to try to find it by yourself. Because if you do, you know, that'd be really, really stunning. Because again, people up to the very end could not even understand what is Fischer trying to achieve. Like even here in this position, it doesn't seem like there are many threats that Black has here. Because the only idea which comes to mind is trying to play Qg2 to checkmate. But clearly, this square is already covered by the White queen. And then what do you do? Fischer's idea was to play Rxe1. In this second line of the combination, the same rook sacrifice still wins the game. White cannot take it with the queen, because then it deflects the queen and Qg2 checkmate would become possible. But how about Rxe1? In this case, Bxd4 attacks the queen, forces it out and still enables Black to deliver the same checkmate. That masterpiece wasn't even Fischer's first burn brother. Let me show you what he did to the younger burn, Db4. In this position, it was Black to play. And Fischer's queen is hanging, as well as the knight on c3. Looks like the queen needs to just go back. After that, White will pick up this knight and will have a winning position. However, Fischer played Re8+, this in-between check forces the king to move before White had a chance to castle. But after the king moves, White is still having the very same two threats to the Black's queen and knight. And what are you gonna do here? Fischer played the move, which later was called the Game of the Century. It was so shocking. And what's interesting is that during this game, Fischer was only 13 years old. And he was playing against a 26 years old Donald Byrne, a multiple-time senior US champion. And Fischer played Be2e6, letting these both pieces to be hanging and just retreating the bishop with some unclear purpose. So what's the point? Well, from here, the bishop hits the other one. And now White can take the queen, could take the knight or could take the bishop. There are three possible options. What if White simply takes this one? Is White now just up a piece? Well, temporarily. But Fischer planned Qxc5 with a unique double pin to the bishop and the pawn. Thanks to this pawn from the dark square bishop, this forces this trade. And then at the end of the day, we can see that Black would end up with an extra pawn in an endgame where the White king is also stuck, so as the rook. And Black has an easily winning endgame position. What about White simply capturing the Black queen? In this case, there is this Bxc4 check. Since the Black rook is right here, controlling the e-file, the king has to go that way. And then instead of taking right here or right here, Black has something much more impressive. He's got Ne2-e2 check and then he resets the position with that famous windmill tactic which is so fancy but also so rare in real life chess. The knight just keeps horsing around, delivering these checks by the bishop. And then at the end of the day, Black finally captures the bishop while also opening the discovered attack of White's queen. This rook on d1 is also hanging and Black gets winning material advantage. White's final option is to capture this Bxe6. But now instead of recapturing, Black's got this sudden check from b5. The king has to go and now Black continues chasing the king. After Kf1, Black's got this sudden double check because not only it's a check from the knight but also from the queen, forcing the king back to g1. And now there's a beautiful finish. I'll give you a few seconds to try to find it on your own. By the way, Fischer played this game with perfect engine accuracy. And if he did it nowadays, definitely someone would give him a nickname of Stock Fischer. He played Qf1 here and after rook captures, that leads to a perfect nightmare. If you want to know the main lessons I learned from Cavablanca and Fischer and how you can incorporate them in your games, head to these free masterclass up there. And if you're curious how Fischer prevented blunders in his games, check out this video.