Fischer My 60 Memorable Games Pdf
Emerenciana Mcgreal
Its a great book without a doubt, and can go straight on the shelf alongside Alekhine and Tarrasch and fear no comparisons. That was the opinion of W.H. Cozens in a review (December 1969 BCM, pages 370-371) of Bobby Fischers My 60 Memorable Games, published by Simon & Schuster in the United States and by Faber and Faber in the United Kingdom. The book continued to receive the highest plaudits from chess enthusiasts of all levels throughout the world, but then came disaster; in 1995 B.T. Batsford Ltd. produced an algebraic edition.
At first, nothing seemed amiss. Page 188 of the April 1995 BCM, for example, gave a hearty, if brief, welcome to this great classic and concluded The best chess book ever written? Everybody was glad that new generations of players unreceptive to the descriptive notation could enjoy Fischers work, and nobody realized what Batsford had done to it.
Nobody, that is, until June 1996, when Fischer gave a searing press conference in Buenos Aires. He denounced the Batsford edition as forged and unauthorized and accused the company of having intentionally included many changes to it, in an attempt to make him look foolish. His salvos were reported in detail on pages 6-12 of issue 432 of the Spanish magazine Jaque (September 1996), whose front cover sported a photograph of Fischer holding up a copy of the offending book.
The magazine also reprinted a conversation some ten days later between Fischer and Juan S. Morgado in a Buenos Aires bookshop. Fischer declared that the Batsford team were criminals and conspirators and added: They changed everything in my book, the notation, the format, the pages, the analysis and without paying royalties. [As related below, in an addition dated 10 November 2012, Fischer had conversations in the bookshop with both Juan Sebastin Morgado and Pedro Federico Hegoburu, but it was to the latter that Fischer addressed the complaints about the Batsford book cited here.]
Batsford swiftly issued a statement, professing itself appalled by Fischers remarks. It said that it had purchased the right to publish the book from Faber and Faber, and that this included the power to make alterations to make the book suitable for the British market. It was thus converted to the algebraic notation and, Batsford added, our intention was to produce an edition that was accurate and faithful to the original. There was no addition or subtraction of intellectual material.
So far as I can see there have been no changes to the intellectual content of the book, either by subtraction or addition. Only one piece of analysis was changed, because a mate in four had been overlooked in the original book. Quite honestly, I cant see any grounds at all for complaint.
Batsford said in its statement that it had written to Fischer enquiring where royalty payments should be sent and asking whether he wished to be involved in the new edition. The only reply took the form of a letter from Bobby Fischers lawyers, querying our right to publish the book. We can only presume that the response satisfied them, since they have not come back to us in the year and a half since then. Batsford concluded: Thus we really dont see any grounds for complaint, and continue to wait for Bobby Fischer to provide an address to which royalties should be sent.
It would be pointless to speculate on these contractual details or letters, but the affirmation that the books content was not changed can be called, loud and clear, a falsehood. Fischers book had not only been changed, it had been butchered deliberately, wantonly and more or less systematically.
The November 1996 CHESS (pages 26-29) set out Fischers grievances (including the Bolbochn episode), whilst leaving in abeyance the question of how many changes Batsford had made. The January 1997 issue devoted nine pages to the controversy. First, there was a one-page account by John Nunn. He stated that he had been the books typesetter, not its editor, and objected to the claims by CHESS along the lines of Nunn has added . He commented, After such a time, it is impossible even for those who worked on the book to say exactly who changed what. Nunn also said that there was only one change to Fischers analysis (i.e. in the Bolbochn game, now acknowledged not to be Fischers error after all). Next, Nunn disputed the claim by CHESS that Fischer had taken great care over his book. If he was so careful, then it is hard to explain why there were over 200 notational errors and ambiguities in the original edition of Fischers book. In game 52, for example, there were seven such It seems a poor reward to correct 200 errors and ambiguities but overlook one, and then be attacked for my involvement in the book.
Most of Nunns other comments were in reply to CHESSs criticism of the new books typesetting and presentation (i.e. double columns, the use of italics, etc.). These issues are not of direct relevance here, although they offer another example of the unfortunate desire to force Fischers masterpiece into the Batsford sausage machine.
Next up at the stand was Graham Burgess, then the Managing Editor of Batsfords chess list. He too stressed Batsfords correction of literally hundreds of errors and ambiguities in the original notation but added nevertheless, it is indeed highly unfortunate that we introduced one error, the mate-in-four-which-isnt in the notes to Fischer-Bolbochan, Stockholm 1962. This was the only change to the chess content of the book.
It is worth mentioning that it is standard in the typesetting process to make minor adjustments in the wording to improve the appearance of the text on the page in terms of spacing, line breaks, column breaks and page breaks.
The reply by CHESS in the same issue addressed the above points head-on. The magazine admitted that when Fischers book had been issued the previous year it had given it merely a quick glance, on the assumption that John Nunn, custodian of chess quality, had at least produced an accurate version of the 1969 original. Concerning Nunns point that the original descriptive edition had many typographical errors (particularly in the moves), CHESS quoted Fischers acknowledgement that there had been millions of typos, as well as his comment, I dont need them [i.e. Batsford] to correct anything for me, even with the help of computers. Of course the book has mistakes, but I can correct them myself. They changed my things on purpose CHESS added that Fischer had taken great care with the books analysis.
The magazine then discussed the various statements by Nunn and Burgess as to who had done, or not done, what. For the record, it may simply be observed here that the copyright page of the Batsford book lists five people: a three-man Editorial Panel (Mark Dvoretsky, John Nunn and Jon Speelman), a General Adviser (Raymond Keene) and a Managing Editor (Graham Burgess). In addition, Nunn is referred to as the books typesetter. He receives a further mention on the back cover: Reset by John Nunn into modern algebraic notation, with many extra diagrams.
As regards that typesetting, or resetting, CHESS noted that Nunn had before him the task of neatly accommodating 384 generously laid out single column pages of the original book into 240 packed double column pages for the Batsford edition and ran into all sorts of problems. Rewording in order to shorten or lengthen text became the norm, diagrams frequently had to be placed out of sequence from related moves and text, losing impact, and, worst of all, in a few desperate cases, whole lines of text were actually eliminated. Sacrilege!
Yet, as noted above, Burgess had claimed that nothing untoward or unusual had been done on the typesetting front. Jeremy Silman was later to comment acidly in his Inside Chess Online review of My 60 Memorable Games:
Mr Burgess, I dont know where you learned this standard typesetting law, but any major publishing house in the United States would instantly fire any typesetter doing this kind of thing. A typesetter who butchers an authors work to make his own job easier should find a new vocation.
Burgess seems to be saying that the typesetter is the one responsible for all the textual changes (and then he says that this is perfectly all right). Nunn says that he didnt really make any errors, and that his only job was to typeset the book! Dr Nunn, are you responsible for all the textual changes? Is Burgess? Who is? Do you think that such changes are justified? Can you honestly say that you wouldnt mind if I made hundreds of textual changes to one of your books someday?
Quite frankly, I am tired of Mr Burgess, Dr Nunn and Batsford pointing out the errors they corrected while simultaneously excusing themselves for the mess they made of everything else. Why not take a mature stand and simply admit that bad judgment was used and, hopefully, that it wont happen again? We are not dealing with a government conspiracy here, gentlemen. Isnt it time to come clean and put this nonsense behind you?
By that time, though, Batsford was disinclined to comment further, whether mendaciously or otherwise, and the shutters were put up. On many previous occasions the company had resorted to a similar policy of tactical silence, most notably on matters concerning the misconduct of Raymond Keene, where a hope-it-blows-over approach was the only chance.
Below are the front covers of various editions in our collection, as follows: the first printing of the original (1969) edition from Simon & Schuster, a subsequent paperback from the same company, two editions (still descriptive) from the British publisher Faber and Faber, and the 1995 Batsford version:
c80f0f1006