Apparently, from 1938 to 1972, at least, Jacques did not change the style
of the chess sets they made, even though it was definitely a different style
from that of their original Staunton pieces in 1849.
This I learned from this web page...

http://www.fersht.com/chess/

I first tried to find the page by searching on his name, and I found results
that I thought were about someone else.

But when I backed up from the page about Staunton chess pieces to his
home page, there was a book about protein folding mentioned there. Thus
he is indeed the same Sir Alan Roy Fersht, FRS FMedSci that my Google
results had turned up!!

To continue with the initial topic...

From this page:

https://bobby-fischer-1972.blogspot.com/1972/07/chess-champions-poised-for-match.html

the salient facts of the board and pieces used are given.

I remembered that the board was green and white marble. But that the
squares were 2 1/4" and chemically treated to be non-glossy were
things I did not know.

Also, while I have seen offered for sale many reproductions of the
Fischer-Spassky chess set, I did not know what was being
reproduced. Now I've learned the original set was from Jaques,
being the type they were selling at the time, and the pieces used
had a 3 1/2" King height.

Incidentally, under current USCF standards, a chess board with
2 1/4" squares is _still_ too big for chess pieces with a 3 1/2"
King height. Which goes to show that Fischer was not all that
fussy, despite what the press of the day made out!!

John Savard

On Monday, August 2, 2021 at 6:21:21 PM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
> Apparently, from 1938 to 1972, at least, Jacques did not change the style
> of the chess sets they made, even though it was definitely a different style
> from that of their original Staunton pieces in 1849.
> This I learned from this web page...
>
> http://www.fersht.com/chess/
>
> I first tried to find the page by searching on his name, and I found results
> that I thought were about someone else.
>
> But when I backed up from the page about Staunton chess pieces to his
> home page, there was a book about protein folding mentioned there. Thus
> he is indeed the same Sir Alan Roy Fersht, FRS FMedSci that my Google
> results had turned up!!
>
> To continue with the initial topic...
>
> From this page:
>
> https://bobby-fischer-1972.blogspot.com/1972/07/chess-champions-poised-for-match.html
>
> the salient facts of the board and pieces used are given.
>
> I remembered that the board was green and white marble. But that the
> squares were 2 1/4" and chemically treated to be non-glossy were
> things I did not know.
>
> Also, while I have seen offered for sale many reproductions of the
> Fischer-Spassky chess set, I did not know what was being
> reproduced. Now I've learned the original set was from Jaques,
> being the type they were selling at the time, and the pieces used
> had a 3 1/2" King height.
>
> Incidentally, under current USCF standards, a chess board with
> 2 1/4" squares is _still_ too big for chess pieces with a 3 1/2"
> King height. Which goes to show that Fischer was not all that
> fussy, despite what the press of the day made out!!

His complaints were generally about practical matters, not following the minutiae of rules set by
those he was generally complaining about.

And as Larsen has mentioned, Fischer's "fussiness" as to lighting and
sound was originally entirely justified. Reading Larsen's columns of
the day you often run into comments about playing halls that were
dark, hot, smoky, or noisy. Or many of the above. Nosebleeds were
common at the Thessaloniki olympiad due to excess smoke.

I once played in a Canadian open in Quebec, where the lighting was fine,
but the site - a sports arena - was very hot and humid. I did very badly
and might have done worse except that my last round opponent was
even more affected by the temperature than I was. A solid B player,
he was soon down a pawn with a poor position and resigned, mainly so he
could get out of the heat (it was much cooler outdoors!). I don't
regard myself as having won that game. The heat did it for me.

William Hyde