MOSCOW – Boris Spassky, a Soviet-era world chess champion who misplaced his title to American Bobby Fischer in a legendary 1972 match that turned a proxy for Chilly Conflict rivalries, died on Thursday in Moscow. He was 88.
The demise of the one-time chess prodigy was introduced by the Worldwide Chess Federation, the sport’s governing physique. No trigger was given.
Spassky was “one of many biggest gamers of all time,” the group mentioned on the social platform X. He “left an indelible mark on the sport.”
The televised 1972 match with Fischer, on the top of the Chilly Conflict, turned a world sensation and have become generally known as the “Match of the Century.”
When Fischer gained the worldwide chess crown in Reykjavik, Iceland, the then-29-year-old chess genius from Brooklyn, New York, introduced the U.S. its first world chess title.
Fischer, identified to be testy and troublesome, died in 2008.
Former world champion Garry Kasparov wrote on X that Spassky “was by no means above befriending and mentoring the subsequent technology, particularly these of us who, like him, didn’t match comfortably into the Soviet machine.”
Spassky emigrated to France in 1976.
On its web site, the chess federation known as Spassky’s match with Fischer “probably the most iconic” within the historical past of the sport.
Yugoslav grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric mentioned that Spassky’s secret power “lay in his colossal talent in adapting himself to the completely different kinds of his opponents,” the Washington Put up reported.
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