is Boris Spassky too underrated?

Boris Spassky was the tenth world Chess champion. Although this fact is known among those who are interested in chess history, who Spassky is is not well known outside of that group. Now, the topic of this thread is: Is he given the credit he deserved?

First of all, let us start in this way: by comparing him to Bobby Fischer who is considered to be the greatest player ever by many including Anand, Carlsen, Kasparov, Mikhail Tal, Alexander Kotov and many others. Boris Spassky lost to him, he lost title to Bobby Fischer and we are not here to deny the greatness of Fischer, we are here to talk about Boris, not Bobby. Now, if Bobby is considered the greatest chess player ever, up until 1972 Boris Spassky was arguably superior to him.

• Before 72, they played 5 games and Spassky scored 3 wins and two draws.
• in one of their matches, Spassky used an opening which is/was not used regularly in top level games and considered a weak opening and still beat Bobby. According to chessgames.com's popularity graph of openings, it was not used regularly even in 60s. 

at 23, Spassky used this opening against an opponent who was expected to dethrone the soviets, Boris used it against a strong opponent.

What I mean is he was so good that he could have beaten grandmasters with such a weak opening. This was not the only game in which Spassky used King's gambit against a strong opponent. One more example that comes to the mind is his game against Bronstein.

now, pre-72 Spassky was at least as good as Bobby Fischer who is widely considered to be the greatest player ever. if Bobby is considered to be the greatest or in top3, why we should not consider the one who was better than him in majority of their careers?

• Now, let us look at the tournaments they played against each other:

the first one Ifound is Mar del plata 1960: Boris finished ahead of Bobby, they were tied but Boris won due to head-to-head game.

the second one is "second piatigorsky cup, again Boris was ahead of Bobby.

then, they played in Havana 66 and Siegen 70. in 66 they drew and in 70 Boris won. then, there was one more tournament in which they were on the opposite sides yet did not play against each other, Bobby gained the most points and finished 1st. That was ussr vs rest of the world 70.

So, if Bobby is considered the greatest/best chess player ever, why Spassky is not considering he was almost always better than Fischer up until 70 or 72? yes, he did not shine like Fischer 71-72 but in the rest of their careers he was as good as Fischer if not better than Bobby Fischer.

Fischer was not the only one who was inferior to Boris before 72, one more example is Mikhail Tal. He is considered to be the greatest attacking player of all times and when we compare him against Spassky pre-72, he too was inferior to Boris.

Classical games: Boris Spassky beat Mikhail Tal 9 to 6, with 27 draws.
Including rapid/exhibition games: Boris Spassky beat Mikhail Tal 9 to 7, with 27 draws.
Only rapid/exhibition games: Mikhail Tal beat Boris Spassky 1 to 0.
    *The figures above are based only on games present in our database which may be incomplete.

It is taken from chessgames.com and when I click on "Spassky losses", pre-72 he lost 3 times only and won 9 times. Boris Spassky's, who is not so well known, record was 9-3 up until 72.
Now, it is widely believed that after 69 or after he became a champion he did not spend much time on ches, the decline of him after 72 may be the reason why he is so underrated. but the bad times he had after 72 does not take anything from his pre-72 shinings.

When we look at his games, at times his attacking was

as good as Tal's, he was as universal as Fischer, he was very versatile. He played King's Gambit which is considered to be a weak opening for a grandmaster level. He must at least be in top5 for his pre-72 career.

One more game in which he destroyed a strong opponent with the unexpected beauty:

At the time this game was played Boris' opponent was in top 5 and was playing board 1 in the team of the world (outside the soviet union) and had consecutive successes in tournament in the last two years.

The reason this games are being presented it he was in no way inferior to Bobby, Misha Tal or others in terms of sacrifce, attacking, calculation and overall.

He did even not take chess championships seriously according to Vladimir Kramnik and yet he was superior to Fischer who was very very hardworking and is said to have spent more time than the entire soviet team. so, it is reasonable to deduce that Spassky was more talented than Bobby, Karpov or many other champions. Boris Spassky was like Morphy, Capablanca or Reshevsky, they must have had pure talents. Yes, Karpov or Kasparov reached far more successes than Spassky but they reached with hard work while Spassky reached without hard work, one can deduce that Spassky was at least as talented as other top3 chess players ever.

According to Anatoly Karpov Spassky was very very lazy. May be Boris Spassky was shadowed by Bobby Fischer but being second to Fischer should not take anything from Fischer.

For sure it is not possible to say that Bobby was the greates player ever, because he won only one World Championship and after 72 he did not play for 20 years. Regarding the Fischer - Spassky match I think that it was not representative for Boris as we know that there were too many irregularities from Bobby. In chess, if you can not concentrate, you play worse. In my opinion the greates responsabilities were from FIDE who did not interrupted the match. Today it would not be possible to accept a behaviour of Bobby Fischer. You can read also the book "Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How A Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine."

it is not so difficult to make a case for "Bobby was the best player ever" considering his shining in 70-72 or maybe 68-72. yes, he won only once but the way he won was unmatched.

"Skols wrote: yes, he won only once but the way he won was unmatched."

The way Bobby won (and Boris lost) was tricky. In my opinion if at the first game of a match you are not there, you take a yellow card (like in football or if you prefer soccer) and loose first game. Then if you continue to menace to interrupt the match, then you take a red card and so on till you probably loose all. You can not try to influence your opponent with a "war of nerves". Boris played maybe not so well in the 72 match, but this depends on the unfair Bobby behaviour. In my opinion this match can not be the one that underrated Boris, just because it was not regular at all.

I had the pleasure of meeting Spassky twice.  He is exactly what i had always heard about, a gentlemen, and a very nice, and sincere man.  

thingsFischer requested do not affect Spassky. more than that, that is beneficial for both.

combination started around move 15.  even though queen capture occured after 3-4 moves, Boris had to calculate far more moves since he had to consider more moves cos in order to capture queen he sacrificed 2 knights and 2 rooks. more than that, Black had overwhelmingly piece advantage but White's queen was active. Boris had to calculate all in order two sac two rooks and 2 knights.

Boris was a good GM but Fischer didn't focus on Russian players until he went for the World Championship. He was certain the Russian GM's colluded against him and other American GM's and I believe he was right. Fischer, once he focused on the World Championship against Russian and German players, he tronced the livin" crap out of them... Taminov, then Larsen, then Petrosian and finally Boris himself. By the end of the 72 World Championship even Spassky knew Fischer was superior. But Kasparov was better than Fischer mainly because Fischer give it up... we'll never really know who was best. Even Karpov could have beat Fischer in the 80's. Fischer just stopped wanting to compete and get better. He soured on the vine so to speak. A lot of brillancies came from this era... you don't see many brillancies anymore. Too much computer analysis. The human mind is much craftier than a computer left to extend a briliant new move or combination... they tend to imitate past accepted lines of play. Computers don't really think of anything unless it's input by a human programmer. So you genius GM's of today give us something better than a computer can generate. I know some new things will happen by humans if only by accident. I believe Chess is still not a dead game! Improvements are still being made in tactics and strategy's in the openings, the middle game and the end game.  

Spasski was underrated but he was also a lazy player, his own words.

Spassky is too modest. After 72 he won the Soviet Ch in 1973. If Spassky had not been so lazy or over confident in 72 he would have beaten. For example in normal for.he would have won game 3 and in game 4 he was just winning. Thats 4-0 right there. He had plenty of chances later in the match as well. Donner pointed out before 72 that he feared Spassky just didnt want to be world champion anymore. Remember Donner was a psychologist and a grandmaster. I personally think Spassky was the most gifted of all of them and could have been the strongest chess player of all time. He just chose not to be, preferring to do other things with his time on earth. One thing is certain: Spassky was a great player and any aspiring player should study his games.

"If Spassky had won, he would have been wc up to 1984 and no one would have ever heard of Karpov"

That is a rather surprising statement :-) Karpov won the super strong Alekhine Memorial 1971, ahead of players like Spassky, Tal, Petrosian, Smyslov, Korchnoi etc. He also won the match against Spassky in 1974 very easily. I fail to see any reason to think that Spassky would have been better than Karpov 1974-84, the latter was probably the better player also before 1974.

"There is little to no difference in terms of quality of play between the two"

The difference is huge :-) Karpov was the clearly best player in the world for a decade, and I don't think any other player ever would have been capable of leading 5-0 in a match against Kasparov. Spassky was a great player, but one of the minor World Champions, and it is uncertain if he ever was the best player in the world. Maybe for some of the years 1964-69, but he was in a totally different league than Karpov, who could score results like this long after his peak:

I admit i don't know his game style or his feats, apart from the Fisher's WC games. Most of all, i have high regard for him, because he was a gentleman in that WC. But i don't know much more about him.

But, IMHO Euwe is the most underrated WC ever. And the few games i saw from him, he was a very strong player. After all he was WC at the time, so...

Spassky himself said something to the effect that in the late sixties he felt he was stronger than Fischer, but around 1970 Fischer became the stronger. 

Spassky is underrated, chiefly because he lost that famous match. But from 1965-69 he was an absolute beast!

Spassky distinguished himself by twice winning, back-to-back, the Candidates match series in 1965 and 1968. 

In 1965, he beat Keres 6-4, Geller 5.5-2.5 and Tal 7-4.  In 1968, he defeated Geller 5.5-2.5, Larsen 5.5-2.5 and Korchnoi 6.5-3.5.  Given the quality of his opponents, and the fact that all (with the exception of Keres) were in their playing primes, I consider this one of the most significant achievements in chess history.

Spassky did lose the 1966 World Ch match vs Petrosian 12.5-11.5, but won in the 1969 rematch 12.5-10.5.  While Petrosian will never be remembered as a great tournament player,his "safety-first" style made him a very formidable match opponent.  Unlike today, there were only a handful of super-GMs, and from 1966-1970, Spassky crushed all of them, including Fischer in 1966 (Santa Monica) and in 1970 (Siegen).  

Spassky was never comfortable under the Soviet School, with it's tendency to use Chess dominance as a propaganda tool for the Party.  He refused to become a Communist party member, and also refused to sign on to condemnation campaigns against players like Taimanov and Korchnoi.  By all accounts he was a great player and is a good guy.

Yes. Spassky's record in the 1966-69 period is extremely impressive. And those matches were full of really entertaining games

All you have to do is study his games to see the greatness that abounds in his playing style.  Spassky is definitely underrated as a WC, probably due to how he was probably treated by the regime after losing to Fischer.  I'm not going to speak about Fischer since we should be focusing on Spassky for this discussion.  Let's face it, you don't become a WC by being a slouch and in the time of Soviet dominance in the chess world Spassky rose above all the rest of his Russian compatriots to be a World Champion and that says a lot about his capabilities as a chess player and a World Champion! 

"... also refused to sign on to condemnation campaigns against players like Taimanov and Korchnoi. By all accounts he was a great player and is a good guy."

Indeed, i think he was, besides a great player, a great man. A gentleman from an era very different from today, where despite the mutual hate USA/USSR and the mutual assured destruction all lived, he put apart the waters and public assumed that Fischer was a genius. Can't imagine the pressure KGB done over him in that and other times.

boris wuz simple. BF blew his candle out. so goes chess.