Boris Spassky - The 10th World Chess Champion

Boris Spassky is the 10th official world chess champion and lecturer. 

He was born on January 30, 1937 at St Petersburg, Russia. He learned chess by watching on the game in the train during the evacuation for World War II.

In 1947, at the age of 10, he defeated Mikhail Botvinnik in a simultaneous game in Leningrad, thus showing potential to become a super strong player.

In 1955, he won the World Junior Chess Championship held at Antwerp, Belgium, with 14/16 points a full point over Edmar Mednis thus gaining the Grandmaster title, the youngest GM at that time.

In 1956, Spassky started to play in the candidates and placed 4th with 9.5/18 behind the champion Vasily Smyslov, Paul Keres and Laszlo Szabo. He continued the candidates until 1985 skipping 1959, 1962, 1984. The two most significant were 1965 where he faced Tigran Petrosian for title match but lost and 1968 where he got title in rematch with 6 wins 4 losses and 13 draws.

Spassky is perhaps best known for his World Chess Championship match of century against Bobby Fischer in 1972, which was highly publicized and became a symbol of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The match took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, and it was the first time since 1948 that a non-Soviet player had a chance to win the World title. The match was closely watched around the world, and chess was at its apex. Fischer's victory made him a cultural icon in the United States, while Spassky returned to the Soviet Union to continue his career.

After losing the world title, he continued to play and winning top tournaments. In 1973, he got his 2nd USSR Championship title, first was on 1961. 1st placed in Bugojno 1978,  Montilla–Moriles 1978, Munich 1979, Baden 1980, London Lloyds' Bank Open 1984,  Reykjavík 1985, etc

In 1992, after a 20-years of match of century, there was “Revenge Match of the 20th century" between Fischer and Spassky in Montenegro and Belgrade. At that time, Spassky was ranked 106th in the FIDE, while Fischer did not appear on the list, due to inactivity. Spassky lost the match with a score of +5−10=15. However, Spassky earned $1.65 million for losing the match. 

As of Feb 2024, he is the oldest surviving world chess champion (87 years old).

There are 2604 games listed in the chessbase.

Let’s look one of his best games which feature in our GMG page.