FT. LAUDERDALE SUN SENTINEL
EVANS ON CHESS
May 4, 2008
BOBBY FISCHER BOOK APPEARS TO BE FAKE
"No other chess figure has had, has or will have more autograph
imitations than Bobby Fischer. GUARANTEED!"
=97 Fisching for Forgeries,by Lawrence Totaro
Last December, a month before Bobby Fischer died in Iceland, an
auction on eBay Canada announced a new revised edition of his classic
My 60 Memorable Games called My 61 Memorable Games purportedly written
by him. Bidding reached $3,050 for the first 50 copies when eBay
pulled the plug: "We recently suspended this seller's trading
privileges. Due to privacy concerns we cannot share further details."
Fischer angrily denied writing it. Yet the seller denied any hoax and
insisted the auction was withdrawn solely because of death threats
received online from someone called "Jews Against Fischer."
"So what should I do with all these books then?" said the seller. "Why
not send them =97 if they exist =97 to Fischer in Iceland?" I replied.
In extensive e-mails over the next three months the seller repeatedly
promised to send me a copy of the new book but never did. I think it
may exist on someone's computer but it has not yet appeared in print.
Obviously a strong player using a computer did a lot of work updating
the manuscript. But Fischer had nothing to do with it and the seller's
story appears to be a fairy tale.
The Canadian came up with excuse after excuse for not sending me a
copy of the book. I played along to gather more information, then
encountered one falsehood after another =97 too numerous to mention.
In order to convince me the book exists, the scammer sent me a photo
of the cover and page 79, naively asking who this Weinstein was that
Bobby kept attacking (knowing full well that Weinstein was Kasparov
before he changed his name). This sample page pointed out a flaw in
analysis by Kasparov in his series My Great Predecessors (Volume 4).
To mimic Bobby's sarcasm, the author was called "Weinstein" and then
boasted: "I'll say this only once =97 Fischer beats Kasparov!"
If the book does surface one of these days, we can rest assured it was
NOT written or authorized by Fischer. For the full story, see Chess
Life Online (http://tinyurl.com/2noyxp).
parrthenon@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> THE FORGER'S QUESTION
>
> >I wonder if Larry bothered to secure reprinting rights for this
> article from CL Online?> -- Steven Dowd
>
> I wonder if Mr. Dowd bothered to secure the rights to forging my name
> on a university website before he did it?
>
> I secured reprinting rights direct from the author, GM Larry Evans,
> who donated this follow-up article free of charge to Chess Life
> Online.
>
>
>
>
> SBD wrote:
> > On Apr 10, 4:08 pm, "parrthe...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <parrthe...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >
> > I wonder if Larry bothered to secure reprinting rights for this
> > article from CL Online?
|
