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Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

There is a hysterically funny "opening manual" that popularized the Bongcloud, no longer at its original site since the author now sells it on Amazon, but mirrored here under its original CC license:

http://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1401479151063.pdf

It is written in a completely deadpan style but is full of inside chess jokes, e.g.:

"Although both Botvinnik and Tal experimented with the opening, it was not until the Bobby Fischer took it up in the early 1960s that the opening found an exponent. Unfortunately, the Bongcloud in Fischer’s hands was so devastating that the games were short and unmemorable, and none are recorded in My 60 Memorable Games."

Bwahahaha ;)

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From the article:

> Nigel Short played against a strong player on Internet Chess Club who used the opening; Short suspected his opponent of being Bobby Fischer.

> English Grandmaster Nigel Short dubbed the opening an "insult to chess".

So...I wonder how the game against Fischer (?) went.

That was a very famous incident, try searching "fischer nigel short bongcloud". Someone played several games against Short and won them all with horrible openings using 2 Kf2 and the like (not Ke2 iirc). The person knew some Fischer trivia so there was wide speculation (including by Short) that the mysterious opponent was Fischer himself. Consensus these days was that it was some prankster using an engine. This was in the era before powerful engines were that widely available, so they weren't people's immediate thought, but they existed.

I'd never heard of bongcloud before but searching YouTube for "Fischer Short" yields many videos discussing this apparent incident. One from a popular channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9p2PrsKWY. Great story.

I like to believe that there's a mysterious and excellent human opponent on the other end. I find it difficult to believe an engine could have such a terrible opening, then go on to defeat a top blitz player. This is just my speculation.

> I find it difficult to believe an engine could have such a terrible opening, then go on to defeat a top blitz player. This is just my speculation.

It's more the other way around. Short was a world championship challenger. There is no human in the world who could beat him with such an opening, except for the possibility of a mysterious Fischer with expanded powers gathered during his time away from the mortal chess world. An engine could also do it, of course, and that's a far more likely explanation. A human operating the engine picks the opening, then lets the engine take over after a few moves.

Did Carlsen not being a similarly skilled player with 2. Kf2 or the bongcloud once?

Yes, against Andrew Tang of all people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_6Zl1jNWYQ

But this is Magnus Carlsen we're talking about.

Excellent, I love a good mystery.

I mis-remembered the Bongcloud as: 1. f3 2. e5 Kf2 (i.e. “fianchettoing” the king :D), but that is apparently called the Hammerschlag.

https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chess_Opening_Theory/1._f3/1...

> by Bongcloudmaster (BM) Andrew Fabbro

Brilliant

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