Robert James Fischer June 1999 Radio Interview

I found the recording of Bobby Fischer's 1999 interview for the Philippine AM Sports Radio station discussing his favourite chess set. I transcribed his answer to a question from a listener from Mongolia:

"Where can you get the chess set like the one you used in the 1992 match with Spassky or the one that I've seen in your photos analyzing?"

Of course, it's a Dubrovnik. Full transcript on my blog, took me ages:

http://bestchessmenever.com/blog/files/fischer-about-dubrovnik.html

-Izmet

Great finding, it is just great info.

I find it comic the part about the Jews. I'm jew, (by family no much practicing), and I take a shower everyday, lol. So no a dirty jew.

It is my understanding that you have being involve on manufacturing some sets designs. Is it really too dificult to carve a Dubrovnik?

Very interesting, thanks for all the hard work you put in, ifekali!

Bobby Fischer's life really is a strange and sad story. These radio interviews show just how far off the edge he had gone.

The knight heads are a problem. At this time there are two carvers worldwide only that can do them right.

One is an old master carver from a northern part of Slovenia that was for a long time pretty much the only one knowing the process and Noj d. o. o. was outsourcing head carving to him. Attempts of matching his skill and doing it in house were unsuccessful *for years* and I have a box of ugly prototype attempts to prove it.

A couple of years back he finally decided to pass the knowledge to Gregor Novak and after months of hard work we finally have another carver that can do it exactly right down to the very last detail.

-Izmet

P. S. As it was explained to me, the secret is not the skill, but the proper sequence of cuts. You start it wrong and it's a mess.

That is facinating.

Any idea how long it toke to make the first 50? like how many carvers, for how long they trained and so on?

I really like the looks of the D set, but it is totally out of my budget.

I also like a lot the looks of the BCE, it is closer to what my budget can be. As I have already pick, on my mind, the exact one I like... by the way here is a question about the BCE.

On your website it says the design 1 have 2 different stalions for blacks and whites, but the design 2 doesn't mention this. What is the diference between the 3 horses?

I think that is just marketing talk. I've not noticed any design differences between my walnut and maple knights. The BCE are a simply beatiful design, you are going to love them!

I see you have it on your picture profile. TY for clarifying this.

I already love this design, just trying to justify the expending for it.

So..... After reading and listening to all the information provided from the interview and other links, am I to assume that Bobby Fisher's Dubrovnik II was not stolen, but auctioned off by the storage facility where his chess set and memorabilia was stored due to payments of storage that were not being paid ? Not sure if I'm getting this right. Further, should that be the case, who was the high bidder at the auction and who actually owns the set now if it was not stolen ? I also wonder what happened and who owns the original Dubrovnik I from the 1992 match and where it went after the match ? I have to assume that certainly someone has these sets somewhere.....

Robb, it's all explained on ifekali's Dubrovnik blog:

http://bestchessmenever.com/blog/files/the-dubrovnik-chess-set.html

You really should bookmark this page...

Thanks-That answered my questions.....

htdavidht wrote:

> Any idea how long it toke to make the first 50? like how many carvers, for how long they trained and so on?

Fischer hated jews. Hated russians. What was he saying he hated himself? Check out his parents.

His mother was Jewish. His father was russian.

Hello! Thats a russian jew my friends! As were

Many world champions. Including bobby!

Very perplexing person shame to go thru life that way.

Izmet:

I have commented on this point before. Comparing Lardy repros with 1849 repros.

For me the point is simple, if the repro would have got the aproval of the original makers then it is as good as the original.

How we can know what the original makers would have aproven or not?

The easy way is if they did documented their quality espects. But if they didn't then all will come down to examine the product they sold and understand this way the quality spects.

For example, what you did there with the pawns. After you have shown this picture I would not have a problem with a Dubrovnik repro with pawns that feature heads of 15 mm (+-1 mm). In other words if it was good for the originals it is good for me.

I have commented on this before, about repros that are better quality than originals, and on expending time and work in none-esencial details that doesn't mater and just make the product more expensive than what it should be.

I do listen to what Alan says, and it does make sence to me. The problem is that I can't see how that CB horse is a 1849. There is not way. This is as much as claiming that the USCF official set is a Dubrovnik repro.

About the question of who made the originals...

Wikipedia says, the last time I cheked, tha nobody knows in what shop it was made. So for all we know it could have being outsorced to India.

This presents now a real problem. You see, if we don't know who is the master wood worker who carved the original set, and this guy never show us how he did it, and futher more he didn't train someone else in how to do it... then from where NOJ is getting it's sets?

You have told me about this before, they learned it from another man. From where this man learned it from?

 There is 2 options on this.

1- we can eventually track up all the way to the original carver of the original sets

OR

2- We will conclude that soomeone was able to reverse engenier the process and figure it out by his own how to make a repro just by the mere study of the final product.

For what I know so far, we are in front of the second option. You have told me doing this is not easy, but clearly someone was able to do this. Or you can go on and interview the old master and find out how he learned to do this horse, maybe that will bring more ligth on the history of this set.

Anyway, my take on this is to spend the work and time on the details that clearly matter for the original creators of the product. And quit making a repro of substancially superior quality than what the original was.

Or make the substancially improved product for a premium cost and the regular repro for a regular prize.

That is just my opinion, at the end of the day the one with the tools on the hand will do what he wants and I will be just left here with this opinion.

> quit making a repro of substancially superior quality than what the original was

I don't believe this is good business advice.

-Izmet

I know. I just want the prize to come down to what I can spend.

htdavidht, you are contradicting yourself. First you want an exact 1849 replica, even though Alan Dewey has said there was a lot of differences between the sets of that time. Next you want an inexact Dubrovnik replica for less. Just buy the CB Dubrovnik, you can't get more inexact than that and who knows maybe the original craftsmen would have deemed it good enough? :)

I don't think I am contradicting myself.

The thing about repros, for me, is that they don't need to be better than the originals. As a mater of fact if a repro is way better to the original then it is being less close to it. You can be off by underquality and by overquality.

In the case of the CB 1849 the problem is underquality.And this is done so bad that the design is not longer recognizeble. I mean you know it is a 1849 because they say this on their website, but if you show it to a chess expert and ask him if can recognice the design, there is not way the expert will find anything in there that leads him to think it have anything to do with a Staunton 1849.

"Alan Dewey has said there was a lot of differences between the sets of that time"

And each one of those different designs have a different name. And in 1849 there where not a dozen of designs, at mosts you can count hallf of that. Each one of those have their own name you can research and document. The 1849 Staunton is a particular design that is recognizeble by itself and over any other design of it's time.

Lest say someone says they going to do a Thonet 14 repro. then they come with something that looks nothing like a Thonet 14, when you ask about this you are told that Thonet made a lot of different designs like the 15 and the 16 so this "repro" is just a free interpretation of several lines you can find in the whole Thonet catalog... so here we have 2 points, first then it is not a Thonet 14 repro, and secondly did Thonet really made a chair this ugly? So people will say this doesn't mater because as long as you can sit on it, it is good enough... but the true is that it does mater.

The problem with the Dubrovnik can be overquality. This is of course a problem. Imagine you are building a repro of a WWII plane that can travel outer space, between planets. How true to the real plane you think this will be?

When the problem is underquality, here is not much debate, everybody can agree that the repro didn't live up to the original, some people will just say they are happy with this anyway. But when the problem is overquality... then this is a whole different animal.

Most of the people will prefer the best posible quality they can get. And they don't care if the original didn't get this good. Some other people will like to own a repro that is as true as the original as it can be, with all the good and bads the original had.

So the best quality repro and the repro that is true to the original are 2 different things.

In other words a Dubrovnik with all the heads of the pawns in the exact same size is not true to the original. It is better than the original? yes. If you where doing a Museum Quality replica of this set... wich one you think will get the museum certify as the more closer to the original repro?

Remember in the world of repros there is not better repro than a museum quality one.

Actually Fischer's father came from Hungary. His name was  Nemenyi, a Jewish Hungarian physicist.

I am pretty sure Alan Dewey meant that he had seen many different knight designs specifically in 1849 sets. Also from what I can see there seems to be many other unique design elements to the 1849 design and not only the knights. Like the wide bases, the cut in the bishops mitre and the shape and size of rook for example.

I also do not like the CB 1849 replica knight. But I am not an expert and I'm not going to say it couldn't be historically accurate, even if it is ugly.

As for making Dubrovnik's on the cheap, there is no historical basis for this as far as I know. The sets were never mass produced or sold on the open market, so who knows how much work was put into them and what the price would have been. From what I can gather, Jaques 1849 Staunton's were also quite expensive luxury products.

The cheaper Dubrovnik replicas are nowhere near the originals or Noj's replicas, so maybe that should tell us something.

For me it is clear that NOJ is way better quality than the originals. I have not question about this.

We can talk about the posible reasons of why they are doing this. Izmet sugest that they have to because people will not acept the quality of the original, the costumer wants more. This are his words:

"Well, the replica makers do not enjoy this luxury. If a knight is a just a bit different from the original, one can reasonably expect mile long threads on chess.com dissing the replica."

I think HOS and recently CB have prove that this is not the point, there is market for even lower quality than originals, so there must be marquet for equal quality.

I think the reason why NOJ overdue it this way is because they want to. They want to make the best posible product they can, and they can make it way better than the original product.

There is not surprice on this. The designer of the original set, Pero Pocek, probably had something like a year to design, find the carpenters, train them and produce 50 sets.

Also consider that even though Pocek was a sculpture, he was mainly a painter, And I have done my research on him and found not sculpture on wood under his names (Pero for his mother land  and Pietro for his time on Italy). And believe me I have done my best to find other wood work of him just to have a point of refence to the Dubrovnik... But there is a lot of dificulties for me to research this, this is language, location and times... no easy for me. I have, though, seeing some pictures of his paintings and I can at least understand in what trent of art He was, and kinda understand the reason behind the aestetics of the chess set.

Also to my surprice there is museums with vast collections of Pocek work, and then againg mostly paintings and not a chess set to be found on a museum. There is not even a reference of a chess set on Pocek's wikipedia page. Maybe I have research the wrong P. Pocek?

If I was to guess how the Dubrovnik was designed, I would say that Pocek did some sketches on pencil and found a really good team of carpenters who translate the sketches to sculptures.

As Izmet have sugested here, the best carpenter (probably artist by profesion) got to make the Horse, the pawns where not so important so they where made by someone else (more like an artisan or a craftman), probably, even, in a different shop.

However it was done, it is reasonable to say that the person who carved the horse is a diferent person than the one who made the pawns. Just by comparing quality of work.

So with this short divagation on how the original set was made. We can understand that there was a lot of room for incinsistencies. NOJ in the other hand have all the time they whant to to produce a set, They don't have another timeline than what they decide to spend on making the set. They also want to bu of perfect quality. So they will invest on this too. They also have years of experience making this design, so there is less guessing how to do it and more of mastering the proccess.There is 2 diferent situations.

The prize NOJ charge for their sets is totally justify, the waiting list to get them shows that this is a fact. If it is too expensive for me is kinda irrelevant.

Still I can make the point that the original one was never this good. So there is not real need to make it this way, exept that it is just what NOJ whants to make. not for other reason but becouse this is what they want to do.