The Last Encounter Before The 1972 World Chess Championship
Dubbed as The Match of The Century between Boris Spassky and Robert James Fischer is one of the most discussed World Chess Championship Match in history of chess. Set in Cold War ,the pride of Soviet Union was at stake as there was 24 years of Global Chess dominance starting form 1948.
1. 1970 Interzonal Tournament
Fischer did not participate in the Zonal(1969 U.S. Championship). However Max Euwe controversially allowed Fischer to participate when Pal Benko and (the reserve William Lombardy ) gave his spot. Fischer won the Interzonal Tournament with 18.5/24 points. The top six participants qualified for the Candidates tournament and Petrosian, Korchnoi (were directly seeded in the candidates match as loser of the last championship match and runner of the last Candidates final tournament respectively).
2. 1971 Candidates Matches
Fischer dominated the candidates tournament with straight 13 victories (6-0 to Taimanov ,6-0 to Larsen, and 1 victory against Petrosian before loss in 2nd game). It ended Fischer's magical run of 20 (or 19 excluding 1 forfeit) straight victories against the world's top grandmasters. Fischer earned the right to become challenger and sent the message for the world that he is coming for the title.
The match against Taimanov has been covered in this classic book by Mark Taimanov.
3. The Last Encounter Before The Match
Fischer reached the 2785( 1972 FIDE list) rating creating a gap of 125 rating points between him and Spassky. Fischer had faced Spassky five times. Fischer had a bad score with 3 losses and 2 draws.
Their last encounter is covered below.
The match was full of drama over the board and outside, but Fischer managed to come back form 0-2 to win the match 12.5-8.5. (You can read about this match form this article by Mike Klein for chess.com ). Before the match, Fischer was interviewed by 60 minutes. Here Fischer is seen with a book containing Spassky games and his classic chess pieces that were used in the 1992 rematch.
5. Impact Of The Match
The match has been covered in magazines ,movies. Here's the Hollywood adaptation of the match.
It made a chess an instant hit; the tension between USA and Soviet Union and the history of Bobby Fischer and the Soviet Union was one of the reasons it was widely followed. It created a chess boom in 1972 and The Queen's Gambit created a massive interest in chess among its viewers. You can read about it here. The moves/moments of the match have been also covered in t-shirts and memes. Wikipedia contains the most detailed information about this match including the games.
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