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February 22 1955
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April 03 1966
The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, California, Sunday, April 03, 1966
World Championship: Russian Pair Will Reveal 'Secrets' In Hot Battle For World Chess Title
By Fred Coleman
MOSCOW (AP) — Some 1,400 miles south of the Kremlin two men have been plotting some of the best kept secrets in the Soviet Union.
Beginning April 11, millions of Russians will stay glued to radio and television sets for bulletin news as the secret strategy unfolds move by move.
The two will battle in the hottest sports event here in three years the finals for the chess championship of the world.
Chess is a national passion in Russia the country which has dominated the game for the past 30 years. Dr Max Euwe of Holland who held the title from 1935-1937 was the last non Russian chess champion.
This time the similar age but contrasting playing styles of champion Tigran Petrosyan and challenger Boris Spassky have added new elements to the match and triggered even greater interest.
It will be the eighth time the world title finals have been held in Moscow and the eighth time a Russian will reign as champion.
Petrosyan will be 37 in June as the match ends. This is considered the best period of the playing life of a chess grandmaster although no longer a time of upsurge in his abilities.
Spassky was 29 in January and is now in his period of greatest growth as a chess master.
Spassky defeated former world champion Mikhail Tal of the Soviet Union for the right to meet Petrosyan. The champion who watched the qualifying round considers Spassky a more dangerous opponent than Tal, chess officials say.
This is due to Spassky's daring imaginative style of play that contrasts sharply to Petrosian's deliberate approach. Experts believe the styles of play rather than the age of the opponents will be the big difference.
Another major difference will be the absence of Mikhail Botvinnik from a playing role for the first time in the long Soviet domination of chess. He held the world crown almost continuously from 1948 to 1963 when he lost it to Petrosyan, 20 years his junior.
Botvinnik was angered by new rules which deny the defeated world champion the automatic right to a rematch. He decided not to enter the competition this time the first since 1963.
The championship match, 24 games stretching through two months will be played in the comfortable air-conditioned variety theater across the Moscow River from the Kremlin.
May 04 1966
June 03 1966
July 1966
July 31 1966
Tigran Petrosian (R), Boris Spassky of Russia 31 Jul 1966, Sun Fort Lauderdale News (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) Newspapers.com
(AP Wirephoto) TIGRAN PETROSIAN (R), BORIS SPASSKY OF RUSSIA PONDER MOVES
. . . man at left operates projection equipment for spectators in background
Draw Marks Chess Play Start 18 Jul 1966, Mon The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California) Newspapers.com
June 17 1969
The Vancouver Sun Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Tuesday, June 17, 1969 ★
Spassky Crowned New Chess Champ
Moscow (AP) — Boris Spassky today became the world chess champion by defeating Tigran Petrosian.
Spassky, 32, achieved the necessary 12½ points to take the world title when his fellow-Russian agreed to a draw without further play in their 23rd game. The game had been adjourned Monday on the 41st move.
Petrosian, who defeated Spassky three years ago, wound up with 10½ points.
Spassky, who lives in Leningrad, won six of the games in the series that started April 14. Petrosian, from Soviet Armenia, had four victories. The other games ended in draws.
Three Decades
Russia has monopolized the world chess championship for more than three decades. The last non-Russian to hold the title was Dr. Max Euwe of Holland who reigned in 1935-37.
Throughout the series, Spassky showed the more daring style while Petrosian relied on his usual conservative approach.
Petrosian won the first game, giving the impression he would dominate Spassky as in 1966.
But Spassky tied the score at 2-2 in the fourth game with his first victory. He then pulled ahead in the fifth game and stretched his lead with another victory in the eighth game.
Score Tied
Near the midway point Petrosian came back, taking the 10th and 11th games and tying the score at 5½-5½.
After an indecisive series of five draws, Spassky won the 17th game, taking a lead he never lost.
Both players are journalists by profession. They write only about chess and in fact are free to devote all their time to the game.
Petrosian won the world title in 1963 by defeating fellow Russian Mikhail Botvinnik.
Spassky Crowned New Chess Champ 17 Jun 1969, Tue The Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) Newspapers.com
June 18 1969
The Guardian London, Greater London, England Wednesday, June 18, 1969 - Page 9 ★
Mate at Last - Leonard Barden on the New Chess Champion
BORIS SPASSKY is the archetype of a Soviet wonder boy; handsome and athletic enough for a hair-cream advertisement he is the very antithesis of the public's view of a chess master as a balding septuagenarian who takes an hour to push a pawn. The new world champion from Leningrad is only 32 and spent his university years as a volley ball halfback and a high jumper.
Many leading players, Tigran Petrosian (the Armenian whom he beat on Monday) included, have the pragmatic, day to day, somewhat materialistic attitudes typical of professional sportsmen; it is just that their field of activity happens to be mental rather than physical. Others, like the former champions Botvinnik, Tal, and Smyslov, are intellectual scientists or artistic dreamers who use the chess-board as the mechanism for their achievement.
Spassky is more complex. In his personality there is often a kind of deep introspective and rather sorrowing quality, even in inappropriate, situations. The Tass commentator remarked that Petrosian appeared relaxed and satisfied when he went to the Central Chess Club to resign the eighth game and go two down, but that the winner Spassky looked careworn and depressed.
Spassky has become world champion at what is generally regarded as the prime of a chess master's life, and it is easy to overlook that he was once considered likely to be the youngest ever champion, and a little later seemed a failed talent.
He learnt the moves when he was five, but then forgot about chess for several years. In 1946 he happened to see games in progress at an open air chess pavilion in Leningrad's Central Park, and his interest revived.
He made rapid progress, coached by a veteran Leningrad master Zak. At 14, he was a candidate master; at 15, he was spoken of as the Soviet Union's most exciting young prospect; at 16, he played with distinction in a strong international tournament at Bucharest; at 18, he was world junior champion.
Youngest player
The same year, 1955, he became the youngest player ever to qualify for the senior world title interzonal tournament, and in 1956, at 19 he was one of the eight challengers who played in Amsterdam for the right to challenge the then champion Botvinnik. Spassky expected little from himself then: “I was very calm, and I understand that I was a very weak player among this company; but I had to fight.” He finished equal second with an enhanced reputation.
At the start of 1958 Spassky played a game which haunted him for years and began the most unhappy period of his life. The USSR championship of that year, held in Riga, was a qualifying tournament for the next interzonal, and in the last round Boris had to meet a young Latvian named Mikhail Tal, who was playing inspired chess in front of his home town supporters in defense of the title which he had won the previous year. Spassky needed a win to be sure of an interzonal place; Tal a win to stay champion. The bitterly fought game was adjourned after 40 moves, and both players stayed up all night to analyze.
Boris described to me what happened: “When I played very important games I usually tried to bathe, to put on a very good shirt and suit. But this time I had analyzed a great deal and came to the board looking very disheveled and tired. Then I was like a stubborn mule: I remember that Tal offered me a draw, but I refused.
“When I lost the game there was a thunder of applause, but I was in a daze and hardly understood. I was certain the world went down; I felt there was something terribly wrong. After this game, I went on the street and cried like a child.”
In this period, also, Spassky was out of favor with Soviet chess officials. In 1960 the world students tournament was held in Leningrad; Spassky was the Russian top board but, deep in his crisis of form, he lost with White to the United States No. 1, William Lombardy, in only 25 moves. The Americans won the tournament, and Spassky carried the can.
It was in 1961 that Spassky took what he thinks was the most positive step in his chess career; he started to analyze and work with Igor Bondarevsky, the grandmaster who is his coach and trainer. Bondarevsky used a different method and with his sympathetic handling Spassky gradually regained the confidence and poise which had disappeared with the defeat by Tal in 1958.
Future problem
Spassky's path to the championship in the last five years, with the narrow defeat by Petrosian in 1966 as the only blemish in a run of victories against other leading contenders, is well known and does not require repetition. His future problem can be stated in two words: Bobby Fischer.
The American grandmaster, already a legend at the age of 24, is the only serious challenger whom Spassky has not already beaten in a match. But Fischer's almost paranoid view of Russian chess is well known, and after his refusal to play in the title elimination series in 1964 followed by his withdrawal in 1967 (written, according to whose account you follow, either on the back of the dinner menu or on the hotel toilet paper), it is very doubtful whether he will ever qualify to meet Spassky by the official means.
Yet as long as Fischer is around, one cannot say for sure that Spassky is the best player in the world as well as being world champion. Two international grading lists bracket Spassky and Fischer jointly at the top; Petrosian in a recent interview rated Fischer as the world No. 4 below Korchnoi but ahead of Larsen and Tal. I suspect the truth is somewhere between these extremes, and would give Spassky a 6-4 on chance to beat Fischer in a match.
He has said that even if he won the title he could never expect to be a chess giant dominating his contemporaries in the same way as Alekhine, Capablanca, Lasker, and Botvinnik.
Today a grandmaster can only be the first among equals; three or four years after reaching my peak I shall start to deteriorate and there will be some other strong player. Yet in talent Spassky could well be the equal of other great world champions; how much further he can go will depend to some degree on whether he now feels his ambitions are satisfied, and partly on what happens to Bobby Fischer.
April 17 1970
July 19 1973
July 20 1973
August 11 1986
The Central New Jersey Home News New Brunswick, New Jersey Monday, August 11, 1986 - Page 11
Ex-King Spassky Fond of Fischer But Not of Chess Crown
Franklin — Almost 15 years after his defeat to chess prodigy Bobby Fischer, former world champion Boris Spassky still speaks admiringly of his American nemesis.
“Bobby was created for chess, he loved chess. For him, the world was created into two part: chess players and non-chess players. He was an honest man, but absolutely unsociable,” Spassky said yesterday to about 200 chess players and enthusiasts at a question-and-answer session at the Somerset Hilton, the site of the current U.S. Open Chess Tournament.
Spassky, the top player in the 1986 Open, reminisced about his famous 24-game match with Fischer for the world chess championship in 1972. Fischer became notorious in the press. Yet, the Russian grandmaster called him a “gentleman.”
“During the match, his behavior was correct. He did not disturb me. He was a gentleman,” Spassky said, his English colored with a Russian accent. He added, though, that Fischer could be a bear at times. “He was polite to chess players, if he respected them.”
Fischer declined to defend his title in 1975 when the international chess organization, known by the French acronym FIDE, would not agree to some of his demands. Fischer has not played professional chess since that time.
Spassky, 49, described Fischer as being almost carried away with his victory.
“He was dreaming to play a lot after the championship. He said he would play 40 people at once. But something happened to him. I can't describe his problems. It's very much a pity,” Spassky said quietly.
Paradoxically, Spassky saw a silver lining in his loss to Fischer. Asked if he would like to become world champion again, Spassky responded with an emphatic “nyet.”
“No, I was unhappy as champion. The best time of my life then was working toward the championship. My life was pure, full of energy. After I won, I realized I had so many duties and nobody helped me. I was dissatisfied with my life.” He paused and added, “I like to fight sometimes, but I'm rather peaceful now.”
Life became difficult for him in the Soviet Union after he lost to Fischer, Spassky went on. The Soviet Chess Federation made it almost impossible for him to travel abroad, which he said sent him into a “deep depression” in 1973. He married a French citizen in 1975 and moved to Paris the following year. However, he played for the Soviet Union for the next seven years while residing in France. About three years later he became a French citizen.
A chess player in the audience, evidently confused about Spassky's nationality, asked, “So, Boris, you're not a defector?”
Quick on the uptake, the Russian-turned-French grandmaster grinned and replied with mock indignation, “I am not a defector, I am a peaceful man,” as the audience broke into laughter and applause.
Sketching his own beginnings in chess, Spassky said the second World War interrupted his first attempt at learning the game when he was 5 years old. Returning to Leningrad when he was 9 in 1946, he experienced a “second love” of the game.
“I became a chess prodigy very fast, in a couple of months. This was mysterious, very mysterious,” the grandmaster said.
On the current state of chess in the United States, Spassky said he believed this country lags behind Europe in “chess culture.” The U.S. needs a “chess leader,” somebody on the order of a Fischer, he said.
The state of world chess also came under fire. In the past, chess champions relied more on themselves, he said. It is now not uncommon for a champion to travel with an entourage of 40 people, something Spassky disdains.
“Champions bring their coaches, cooks, psychologists, parapsychologists and so on,” he said. “A chess match now is like a fight between two big collective farms.”
Ex-King Spassky Fond of Fischer But Not of Chess Crown 11 Aug 1986, Mon The Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick, New Jersey) Newspapers.com
August 25 1986
Detroit Free Press Detroit, Michigan Monday, August 25, 1986 - Page 87
Chess King Lost Crown, Stayed in Spotlight
The former world chess champion — the Soviet who lost his title to American Bobby Fischer in the most publicized chess match in history — lounged on a couch and tried to explain the physical and mental pressures inherent in his craft. […] Spassky indicated he is on friendly terms with Fischer and sometimes talks to him on the phone, but he refused to report on the activities of the reclusive American who won the championship from him.
“Bobby wants to avoid publicity and made me promise not to disclose his activities or his whereabouts,” Spassky said. “Actually, it is a shame, because after my defeat, Fischer was in a unique position to galvanize American interest in chess. Instead…”
He shrugged.
In 1969, Spassky won the world chess championship and held that title until the famous 1972 match with Fischer in Iceland. Though he never regained the championship, Spassky has remained active in international competition and continues to be one of the world's top dozen players.[…]
“After the loss, I was barred by the government from playing in international competition for nine months,” he said. “That was not proper. After a defeat, it is necessary for a grand master to continue in competition or else he can lose his competitive edge.
“But the government had a different outlook. They had been keeping a bill on me for my ideological differences with them when I was champion. When I lost, they presented me with the bill and said, ‘Pay up.’ The payment was the nine-month suspension.”
Chess King Lost Crown, Stayed in Spotlight 25 Aug 1986, Mon Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) Newspapers.com
