(FILES) Russian-born chess grasp Boris Spassky (L) shakes fingers with US grasp Bobby Fischer (R) firstly of their first match within the Lodge Maestral in Sveti Stefan, on September 2, 1992. The Russian Chess Federation introduced on February 27, 2025, that the Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky had died. (Picture by AFP)
PARIS, France — Fifty years in the past, the Chilly Warfare was transposed to a chessboard as Bobby Fischer of the US took on defending world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, who has died aged 88, in an exhilarating East-West conflict dubbed the “match of the century”.
Some 50 million TV viewers tuned into the two-month-long tussle within the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, the place chess’s enfant horrible Fischer got down to wrest the championship from the Soviet Union, which had dominated the sport for many years.
AFP reported each day from the competitors. This account is predicated on its reporting.
READ:
Spassky: Legendary loser of ‘match of the century’ dies at 88
India’s Gukesh Dommaraju turns into youngest chess world champion
Toledo concludes stellar PCAP SGM Wesley So Cup run as runners-up
Polar opposites
On one facet of the desk is Fischer, an eccentric, fiercely aggressive 29-year-old former boy marvel, who was holding his personal amongst America’s greats by the age of 12 and has already received eight US chess championships.
Grown up within the New York suburb of Brooklyn, Fischer turned the world’s youngest ever chess grand grasp on the age of 15 and dropped out of faculty to concentrate on the sport.
AFP’s correspondent in Reykjavik says “he has few mates and doesn’t care to make any” and that his motto is: “It’s not sufficient to defeat an adversary, you must crush them.”
He goes into the competitors having received 101 out of his earlier 120 video games.
Within the different seat is 35-year-old Boris Spassky, a skilled journalist and married father of two kids who has been world champion for 3 years.
Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in 1937 he was despatched to an orphanage in Siberia through the Nazi German siege of the town throughout World Warfare II.
A pure product of the Soviet chess machine, he started taking part in at 5 and have become world champion at 19.
A likeable, modest character, he’s the antithesis of the cantankerous Fischer.
Mood tantrums
Fischer is the primary US-born participant to have a stab on the title (since 1946, the 2 finalists have all the time been Soviet).
Iceland, as impartial nation, hosts the match.
Fischer makes a collection of calls for earlier than agreeing to take part. The venue, a sports activities corridor, should be sound-proofed, fitted with a brand new carpet and the room temperature stored to 22.5 levels Celsius.
However on the eve of the competitors, he has nonetheless not proven up. Henry Kissinger, US nationwide safety advisor on the time below President Richard Nixon, calls Fischer and convinces him to participate.
AFP experiences that the US champion “seems drained” when he lands in Reykjavik on July 4. He geese out of the opening ceremony. An outraged Spassky calls for an apology.
The competitors lastly will get underway on July 11, 9 days late.
‘Scandal of the century’
Spassky arrives 20 minutes early to the opening sport to “vigorous applause” from the two,500 spectators within the packed corridor. Fischer dashes in on the final minute, “pushes previous the photographers, rushes in the direction of Spassky, shakes his hand” and sits down. The sport is lastly on.
On the twenty eighth transfer, the sport seems headed for a draw. However Fischer then makes two unhealthy strikes and resigns on the 56th transfer.
Stung by his loss, he calls for that every one cameras be faraway from the corridor. When the request is denied, he refuses to indicate as much as the second sport, forfeiting it.
“The spectators are upset and exasperated,” AFP experiences.
Because the third sport looms Fischer is nowhere to be discovered. Kissinger once more picks up the telephone. “Please, proceed the sport,” Fischer later quotes him as pleading.
The corridor is packed when the competitors resumes on July 16, however the stage is empty. Spassky has accepted Fischer’s demand that they play in a small again room (with a digital camera broadcasting the occasions to the principle corridor exterior).
Some commentators see Spassky’s concession as a nasty omen for the Russian, who goes on to lose the sport.
The fourth is a draw and Spassky resigns the fifth.
The 2 at the moment are neck-and-neck.
Video games for the historical past books
The sixth sport is among the hardest of the competitors. Spassky throws within the towel on the forty first transfer.
“I’m happy with this sport, it was one among my finest,” Fischer tells AFP, including: “When Spassky joined the group in applauding my victory I believed ‘what a gentleman’.”
Spassky additionally resigns the thirteenth sport, a chess masterclass, based on AFP’s correspondent, who reported that, after congratulating his opponent, Spassky “sits again down in contemplation for six minutes, his gaze misplaced within the chessboard”.
The Russian asks that the 14th sport be postponed and the subsequent seven are all attracts.
Recreation 21, which fits to Fischer, seems to be the final. The subsequent day Spassky resigns the sport, making Fischer, who continues to be asleep, the eleventh world chess champion, with a remaining rating of 12.5-8.5.
Learn Subsequent