Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess

xix+97 pages with tables and diagrams. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's grey cloth with black and red lettering to spine and chess piece pictorial to cover in original pictorial jacket. (Betts: 29-41) First edition.

It contains an introduction by Fischer with an account of his chess career from May 1955 to May 1958. Fourteen annotated games (thirteen from the 1957-58 United States Championship and one from the 1956 Rosenwald Tournament) and his twenty one games, without notes, from the 1958 Portoroz Intentional Tournament.

Robert James Fischer was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. Many consider him to be the greatest chess player of all time. Fischer showed great skill in chess from an early age; at 13, he won a brilliancy known as "The Game of the Century". At age 14, he became the US Chess Champion, and at 15, he became both the youngest grandmaster up to that time and the youngest candidate for the World Championship. At age 20, Fischer won the 1963-64 US Championship with 11 wins in 11 games, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. His book My 60 Memorable Games (1969), is regarded as a classic work of chess literature. He won the 1970 Interzonal Tournament by a record 3 1/2 point margin, and won 20 consecutive games, including two unprecedented 6-0 sweeps, in the Candidates Matches. In July 1971, he became the first official FIDE number-one-rated player. Fischer won the World Chess Championship in 1972, defeating Boris Spassky of the USSR, in a match held in Reykjavik, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the US and USSR, it attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since. In 1975, Fischer refused to defend his title when an agreement could not be reached with FIDE, chess's international governing body, over one of the conditions for the match. Under FIDE rules, this resulted in Soviet GM Anatoly Karpov, who had won the qualifying Candidates' cycle, being named the new world champion by default.

Condition:

Previous owner's stamp to front end paper. Jacket with some closed edge tears and creases, spine end chipped and scuffed else a very good copy in like jacket.