Recreation & Sports

Known as the Match Of The Century two years prior to Spassky’s defense of his title against Fischer, the USSR v The Rest of the World match held in Belgrade during the spring of 1970 was a truly unique event featuring four rounds of play on ten boards involving two dozen of the best grandmasters of the time.

The World Championship was firmly in Soviet hands since 1948, so half of the Soviet team held the title: Spassky, Tigran Petrosian, Mikhail Tal, Vasily Smyslov and Mikhail Botvinnik. As reigning champion, Spassky played on the top board facing Bent Larsen whose string of recent successes elevated him to first board over the until recently inactive Fischer.

The 1992 Fischer-Spassky match was a race to ten wins; if tied at 9, the match would be abandoned as “undecided”.  After four games both players had one win; Fischer opted for “Spanish Torture”, improving on move 18 in a position where he strayed badly in game 3.  Spassky defended an inferior position well, and a series of slips by Fischer allowed 25… f5!! which turned the tide towards Black.

The ensuing fireworks produced an extra rook for Spassky, giving him a 2-1 lead in the match; in the postgame press conference he said “I may be an old lion, but don’t put your head in my mouth, or I’ll bite it off.”

The 1992 Fischer-Spassky match in UN-sanctioned Yugoslavia was highly consequential to the sport of chess.  At five million dollars with the winner taking two-thirds, the purse was was astronomical.  No chess event in history has offered anything close to this prize, and it rivalled that of the best-paid sportsmen of the time:  Bobby Bonilla had recently signed for six million dollars a year to become baseball’s richest player, and Michael Jordan’s salary during his second championship season was $3.25 million.

More importantly, Fischer’s clock revolutionized gameplay with the abolishment of adjournments.

Later in his career Spassky produced a sparkling gem during the 1988 Bundesliga against that year’s French Champion Gilles Andruet.

The first two dozen moves are as conventional as can be with measured development focused on the center followed by the major pieces attending to the half-open files.   Spassky’s 16th move initiated pressure on the kingside which led to inaccuracies by White several moves later.   The final coup de grâce forcing mate is a superior example of brilliance bright and rare.

The 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavik saw Spassky’s early two-game lead become a three-game deficit after Fischer won games 3, 5, 6, 8 and 10.    In the face of such dire straits, Spassky chose to enter Fischer’s beloved Poisoned Pawn variation despite the Challenger having a +5=4-0 record with the Black pieces.

Spassky uncorked a novelty on his 14th move; soon after, Fischer began to play inaccurately while Spassky’s relentless precision soon allowed him to win the wayward Black queen.   At its midpoint the outcome of the match was again in doubt.

Spassky became the Tenth World Champion in 1969, overcoming Tigran Petrosian in a tightly-contested match.   Here the Challenger becomes Champion by exploiting minor missteps to achieve a material advantage which is then converted into a winning attack.

This game, from the 1960 USSR Championship played in Leningrad, Spassky’s birthplace, was famous in its own right at the time and served as inspiration for the chess game featured in the James Bond film From Russia With Love.

While Spassky’s 15th move was later found to be technically inaccurate, Bronstein had used two hours of time at that juncture, leaving a mere half-hour for his next 26 moves.   Under time pressure even the elite stumble in the face of complexity, and  so Black’s consequent misstep allowed Spassky to finish the game with unerring precision.

Ding with the White pieces came out somewhat passively but certainly not as pusillanimously as Game 10.

No serious opportunities arose for either side; once many pawns and most of the minor pieces came off the board all that was left was hardly unbalanced.  Ding even conceded his b-pawn as the time control approached as, with all of the few pawns left were on one side of the board, no true disadvantage came from the material deficit.  Another minor slip allowed Black to confine the White king to its back rank, allowing the Black king positional superiority but in no way enough to do anything but draw.

Then like a bolt from the blue the Champion violated the cardinal rule of defending an inferior position:  keep the pieces on and get the pawns off.   By taking up White’s most foolish offer to trade rooks and then forcing the bishops off, Black was able to quickly achieve the most elementary of wins.

The French Defense made its reappearance, Ding having used a rarity on the way to scoring a win with the Black pieces in Game 1.   In this contest Ding was first to deviate, but with a poorer concept.  Gukesh missed numerous opportunities to gain a clear advantage–overlooking the killshot on move 31 may haunt the young Challenger for some time– and Black managed to escape in a well-known drawn rook-and-pawn endgame.

Enjoy the interactive game viewer below, no chess knowledge required.

Another thrilling contest at the most critical time; with three games remaining, the Champion Ding needed to at least win once and had two opportunities with the White pieces to do so.

After reaching a perfectly equal opening tableau, a most innocuous-looking positional slip foreshadowed a deeper positional deficiency in Gukesh’s handling of the position–his dark-squared bishop is best returned to its original square where it does not interfere with its fellow pieces and functions perfectly fine.    This came to light with a blunder on move 16 that led to a strong advantage for Ding which he confidently converted to victory, ending with a flourish that forced resignation in the face of checkmate.

This spectacular clash featured world-class preparation and skillful, combative play providing all manner of complexity:  characteristics that makes chess beautiful if useless.

From the outset White challenges Black’s preparation of little-explored territory, and while a technical advantage did not come of it the demands it made of Black created the conditions of the time scramble where Gukesh’s accuracy triumphed over Ding’s imprecision.

Gukesh came with a prepared and atypical opening that caused Ding to take enormous amounts of time early.  Gukesh in turn took a full hour to find his 13th move, and the position became quite complex and demanding of precision.

After Black’s 13th both players had to adjust to a much more restrictive approach to time management, and in such a complicated position the conditions were ripe to test the excellence of the talent at the board.  After precision mixed with mild inaccuracies, Ding failed to find the necessary defensive move on move 26 and followed it with a game-losing blunder that gave Gukesh a victory which further is considered a miniature as it lasted less than 30 moves.

Enjoy the interactive game viewer below, no chess knowledge required.

In a terrible day for chesslovers young and old, Ding made no move that took advantage of White’s primacy due to the advantage of the first move.   A fully-equal endgame was reached and after barely using half their time the players repeated the position.  This was a non-event marketed as a world-class sporting competition.

Perhaps Ding, knowing that Gukesh’s rating in Rapid and Blitz is far lower than at the much slower Classical time control, is content to draw the remaining games with the intent of keeping the Classical Championship by triumphing at shorter time control.  This was explicitly–and in my view, cynically–done by Carlsen years ago.

Games like this one are a stain on the sport.   People pay good money to go and see the contests for the World Championship–as a child, Gukesh saw for himself Anand-Carlsen ten years ago in Chennai and it’s part of his motivation.

Enjoy the interactive game viewer below, no chess knowledge required.