My 60 Memorable Games, Bobby Fischer

My favorite chess book is ‘My 60 Memorable Games’, by Robert James Fischer himself.

This book is a collection of the 60 games Fischer thinks are the most significant of his career. These games were played between 1957 and 1967, so they don’t include the games from his World Chess Championship Match against Boris Spassky in 1972, which is a pity because I would have really liked Bobby Fischer’s comments about his famous game 6. 

For every game of the book, Fischer provides a detailed analysis and his own comments, as well as references to some of his older games. He says that each of these games, even the three losses he decided to write about, contains something memorable and exciting. This book helped me gain insights into chess that have allowed greater understanding and better play.

My personal favorite from this book is his game against Mikhail Tal from Bled 1961: in this game, Fischer fully exploited an opening error made by Tal (Nf6 instead of a6 in a very notorious Sicilian Defense position). He played with engine-like precision, and in the end he was able to beat Tal in the style of Tal himself: he sacrificed his queen and reached a winning endgame (two rooks and three pawns against a queen); quite outstanding.

To sum up, I recommend this book to anyone who would like to gain a deeper insight into the game of chess, as Bobby proved to be not only one of the greatest chess players of all time, but also a very nice teacher.

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