World champion will be famously remembered for the ‘match of the century’ against American Bobby Fischer in 1972. Soviet chess grandmaster Boris Spassky, who was famously defeated at the height of the cold war, has died at 88, the Russian Chess Federation announced on Thursday.
“The tenth world champion Boris Spassky has died at 88,” the federation said in a statement on its website, calling it a “great loss for the country”. The statement did not say when exactly he died or from what cause. Spassky is best remembered for his duel with American Bobby Fischer in 1972, which was emblematic of the confrontation between east and west and was later referred to as “the match of the century”.
The cold war duel has been the subject of numerous books, documentaries and films. Most notably it inspired Walter Tevis’s novel “The Queen’s Gambit,” which was adapted into the acclaimed Netflix series in 2020. Spassky became world champion in 1969 and held the title until he played the match that would define his career, facing the eccentric American prodigy.
With the Soviet Union having dominated the game for years, Spassky faced a must-win situation and initially took the lead. But the American roared back to win, ending an unbroken streak of Soviet world champions since 1948. Spassky showed great sportsmanship, applauding Fischer after losing the sixth game.
Although the loss was a slap in the face for Moscow, Spassky admitted decades later it was a relief to be rid of a “colossal responsibility”. Born in 1937 in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, Spassky showed prodigious talent early, becoming junior world champion and the youngest grandmaster in history at the time at 18.
Spassky, who was the oldest living world chess champion, represented France in three chess Olympiads in 1984, 1986 and 1988, and was seen playing in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris during the 1990s. His health deteriorated in the early 2000s, and he disappeared from Paris in August 2012 before resurfacing in Moscow in October that year.
