September 16, 2015
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/16/440914112/pawn-sacrifice-examines-genius-of-chess-champion-bobby-fischer
NPR talks with chess writer and grandmaster Andy Soltis about 11th World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer and the movie Pawn Sacrifice.
SIEGEL: In some sports – I’m including chess as a sport – we just assume that today’s competitors, given whatever training tools they have or whatever instruments they have – what kind of tennis racket, what kind of golf club – they’re all better today than the people who played the game 30 years ago. Does one assume that the quality of chess players grows in that sense, or if Fischer came back tomorrow, could he take on all the guys who are playing the game right now?
SOLTIS: He would need some time to catch up, catch up on the opening theory and that type of stuff. And he would also have to get used to working with computers because that’s – the computers are just so much better than chess players nowadays. There’s a world championship chess tournament going on right now that hardly anybody pays attention to in the chess world because all the players in it are computers, and they’re far much – far better than we are. They make moves that we just don’t understand.