Boris Spassky, the world chess champion whose career was overshadowed by his loss to Bobby Fischer in the “Match of the Century” in 1972, died on Thursday in Moscow. He was 88.
His death was announced by the International Chess Federation, the game’s governing body, which did not cite a cause. Mr. Spassky had suffered a major stroke in 2010 that left him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
Arkady Dvorkovich, the president of the federation, said in a statement: “He was not only one of the greatest players of the Soviet era and the world, but also a true gentleman. His contributions to chess will never be forgotten.”
Mr. Spassky had noteworthy accomplishments as a player, but the politics of the match with Mr. Fischer, at the height of the Cold War, and the media attention focused on it, turned both of them into pawns in a wider drama.
Mr. Spassky was not happy about all the attention. In a 2023 interview for an exhibition at the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis, his son, Boris Jr., said: “The role that he played in the 1972 match, he always thought of it as a chess player, because all the fuss around it, political, geostrategic, he never mentioned it. I am pretty certain that he felt the pressure.”
It was a measure of the match’s resonance that 20 years later, when the two men staged a rematch, it drew worldwide interest, even though both players were well past their prime.
When they played the first match, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Mr. Fischer, with his brash personality, was something of a folk hero in the West. He was widely portrayed as a lone gunslinger boldly taking on the might of the Soviet chess machine, with Mr. Spassky representing the repressive Soviet empire.
The reality could not have been further from the truth. Mr. Fischer was a spoiled 29-year-old man-child, often irascible and difficult. Mr. Spassky, at 35, was urbane, laid back and good-natured, acceding to Mr. Fischer’s many demands leading up to and during the match.
The match almost did not happen. It was supposed to start on July 2, but Mr. Fischer was still in New York, demanding more money for both players. A British promoter, James Slater, added $125,000 to the prize fund, which doubled it to $250,000 (about $1.9 million today), and Mr. Fischer arrived on July 4.
The match was a best-of-24 series, with each win counting as one point, each draw as a half point and each loss as zero. The first player to 12.5 points would be the winner.
In Game 1, on July 11, Mr. Fischer blundered and lost. Afterward, he refused to play Game 2 unless the television cameras recording the match were turned off. When they were not, Mr. Fischer forfeited the game.
The match seemed in doubt, but a compromise was worked out to move the match to a tiny, closed playing area behind the main hall.
Mr. Fischer won Game 3, his first victory ever against Mr. Spassky, and proceeded to steamroll him, winning the match 12.5 to 8.5.
Mr. Spassky’s sportsmanship was on full display in Game 6 of the match, which by then had been moved back into the main hall. When Mr. Fischer won the game, taking the lead for the first time in the match, Mr. Spassky joined with the spectators in standing and applauding his victory.
After losing the match, Mr. Spassky received a chilly reception on his return to the Soviet Union. He bounced back to win the Soviet Championship in 1973 and reached the semifinals of the qualifying matches for the world championship in 1974, losing to Anatoly Karpov, the future world champion.
Still, things were not the same. For two years, he was banned from traveling abroad, the life blood of a professional chess player in the Soviet Union, and his financial support and perks were cut. He found a way out, however.
In 1975, he met Marina Stcherbatcheff, a secretary working at the French Embassy in Moscow, who became his third wife. They moved to France, and he became a French citizen in 1978.
In 2012, in a bizarre episode, Mr. Spassky was whisked out of France, turning up about a month later in Russia, where he claimed that he had been kept against his will in a hospital in France and had been able to leave only with help from friends. He lived in Moscow for the rest of his life.
The pressure that Mr. Spassky felt to defend the Soviet hegemony over chess was immense. Years later, he was reported to have said of the 1972 match: “I was happy to lose the championship. My years as champion were the worst years of my life.”
Boris Vasiliyevich Spassky was born in Leningrad (later St. Petersburg) on Jan. 30, 1937. He was the second child of Russian parents; his parents later divorced, and his father left the family.
He grew up extremely poor, and when he was 5, during the siege of Leningrad, he was temporarily placed in an orphanage to escape the war. It was there, according to his son, that he learned to play chess.
He began studying chess in earnest in 1947 when he joined the Palace of Pioneers, a state-sponsored club that developed the talents of promising children, and his talent was immediately noticed and nurtured. By the time he was 11, he was receiving a stipend for chess, which became the family’s primary source of income.
In 1955, he won the World Junior Championship and placed third in the Soviet Championship, becoming a grandmaster at 18, the youngest in history. That record was eclipsed three years later when Mr. Fischer became a grandmaster at 15.
From 1951 to 1961, Mr. Spassky trained with Alexander Kazimirovich Tolush, a well-known master of the attack, and he had a number of successes. But he grew disenchanted with his results and switched to Igor Zakharovich Bondarevsky, who had a more strategic approach. Mr. Spassky’s play began to improve, and he began his ascent to the world title.
At his height as a player, from the early 1960s to the early ’70s, Mr. Spassky won by playing in whatever manner the position demanded. When opportunities presented themselves, he could attack viciously, as in his brilliant performance against David Bronstein in 1960, a game used as the basis for the chess scene in the 1963 James Bond movie “From Russia With Love.” He could also, with great patience, deftly outmaneuver his opponents, as he did in his Game 21 victory in the world championship match against Tigran Petrosian in 1966.
Mr. Spassky lost the match against Mr. Petrosian, but he qualified to play for the world title again in 1969, and this time he beat him. After his loss to Mr. Karpov in 1974, Mr. Spassky qualified for three more world championship cycles but was knocked out each time.
He remained a Top 10 player into the mid-1980s, but his results began to slip and he played without his former élan, often settling for quick draws. Many observers said that he had become lazy.
By 1992, Mr. Spassky was living on the margins of the chess world. Then the owner of a bank in Belgrade, where Mr. Fischer was living, offered $5 million for a return match with Mr. Fischer. The condition was that the match would be played in Serbia and Montenegro, the former Yugoslavia, which were under United Nations sanctions for waging a brutal war against Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The match violated the sanctions, but Mr. Spassky enthusiastically agreed to play. “He pulls me out of oblivion,” he said of Mr. Fischer. “He makes me fight. It’s a miracle and I am grateful.”
The match received worldwide attention and lasted 30 games, but the result was no different from the one 20 years earlier: Mr. Fischer won, 10 games to 5, with draws not counting.
The matches differed, however, in two respects: The quality of play had suffered a sharp decline, and the tension between the two players was gone. Mr. Spassky and Mr. Fischer, bound together by being at the center of so much scrutiny for so long, were old friends, laughing and talking before and after the games.
In addition to his son, Mr. Spassky’s survivors include three grandsons. All three of his marriages ended in divorce.
Mr. Spassky’s warm feelings for Mr. Fischer were genuine, as he showed in 2004, when Mr. Fischer was arrested in Japan for not having a valid passport and was threatened with deportation to the United States to face charges for violating the sanctions against Yugoslavia.
Before Mr. Fischer was ultimately released and sent to Iceland, Mr. Spassky sent a letter to President George W. Bush, asking for clemency.
“Bobby and myself committed the same crime,” he wrote. “Put sanctions against me also. Arrest me. And put me in the same cell with Bobby Fischer. And give us a chess set.”
