Pawn Sacrifice - Can Chess be Made Exciting?

Marter

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Oct 27, 2009
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Pawn Sacrifice - Can Chess be Made Exciting?

Pawn Sacrifice is a biopic of chess legend Bobby Fischer. Is it exciting enough to warrant a watch?

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MCerberus

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It's a shame it goes safe, because Fischer's life contains a good storyline about the sheer stupidity of the cold war. This is more of after the game itself. Where he's a wanted, but rich man that nobody had any real interest in really finding. Technically an enemy of the state because he engaged in a competition that on any other time would be useful in diplomacy.

So a movie could work, containing Fischer but really about the politics of the era.
As pretty much what any other USCF member can tell you, Fischer's legacy is in his game theory and exile, not the match itself.
 

Goliath100

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Why are people impressed by chess being exciting to watch? You would never hear someone say that about soccer, or football (american), and they are both boring as hell.
 

Albino Boo

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Bobby Fischer wasn't a very sympathetic person. He was a rabid anti semite. He denied the holocaust, he claimed the US was a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards and hoped there was a military coup in the US that would close down all the synagogues, arrest all the Jews, execute hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders.
 

StreamerDarkly

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Marter, it almost seems like you would have preferred the writers lie just to make the protagonist more likeable. Fischer was known to be a very difficult person even before his mental illness revealed itself. Common wisdom in the chess community says the match only reached its completion due to Spassky being gracious and accepting some of Bobby's ridiculous demands. He made even more demands for Karpov and ended up backing out when they weren't accepted. Better to just remember him as a brilliant chess player whose games are still pored over by anyone studying the game than to pretend he was a good guy.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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Goliath100 said:
Why are people impressed by chess being exciting to watch? You would never hear someone say that about soccer, or football (american), and they are both boring as hell.
Subjectivity. Some people can be excited by what others find boring, its all subjectivity, man. Some folks find watching any form of chess presentation boring, others will be edge-of-their-seat rapt with attention because of the game theory unfolding before their eyes. Its the same way with both forms of football (american or otherwise) and pretty much any sport, game, or whatever.
 

hentropy

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We all know Bobby Fischer's brain in inside the IBM Watson, and only Mike Tyson can let him out.
 

Darth_Payn

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Imperioratorex Caprae said:
Goliath100 said:
Why are people impressed by chess being exciting to watch? You would never hear someone say that about soccer, or football (american), and they are both boring as hell.
Subjectivity. Some people can be excited by what others find boring, its all subjectivity, man. Some folks find watching any form of chess presentation boring, others will be edge-of-their-seat rapt with attention because of the game theory unfolding before their eyes. Its the same way with both forms of football (american or otherwise) and pretty much any sport, game, or whatever.
That at least explains why Poker turned into a spectator "sport".

OT: I don't get it. Marter put down this movie because it's lead is hard to like, but praised Sicario for pretty much the same reason?