Boris Spassky, a Soviet-era world chess champion who lost his title to American Bobby Fischer in a legendary 1972 match that became a proxy for Cold War rivalries, died on Thursday in Moscow.
When Fischer won the international chess crown in Reykjavik, Iceland, the then-29-year-old chess genius from Brooklyn, New York, brought the U.S. its first world chess title.
The televised 1972 match with Fischer, at the height of the Cold War, became an international sensation and became known as the “Match of the Century.”.
On its website, the chess federation called Spassky's match with Fischer “one of the most iconic” in the history of the game.
Former world champion Garry Kasparov wrote on X that Spassky “was never above befriending and mentoring the next generation, especially those of us who, like him, didn’t fit comfortably into the Soviet machine.”.
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