Bobby Fischer was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A prodigy, he won the first of a record eight United States Championships at age fourteen, including one tournament in 1964 that he swept with a perfect 11-0 score. He qualified for the 1972 World Championship by defeating Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen 6-0 each and Tigran Petrosian in a further match, then won the title itself against the Soviet Unions Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, a match publicized as a Cold War confrontation that drew more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since.
Facts
Career HighlightEleventh World Chess Champion, won the 1972 world title match against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik. 1 Classification
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Sources
1. Wikipedia, Bobby Fischer
Wikimedia FoundationLead section (introductory paragraph), Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer
Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943, January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. Qualifying for the 1972 World Championship, Fischer swept matches with Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen by 6-0 scores. After winning another qualifying match against Tigran Petrosian, Fischer won the title match against Boris Spassky of the USSR, in Reykjavík, Iceland.
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Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion.
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A Chess Match Publicized As A Cold War Confrontation
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did the 1972 World Chess Championship draw so much attention beyond the chess world?
It was publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the American challenger and the Soviet titleholder, and it drew more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since.
The 1972 World Chess Championship pitted Bobby Fischer, the American challenger, against Boris Spassky, the Soviet titleholder, in Reykjavik, Iceland. Fischer had already defeated Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen by a score of six to nothing each, then beaten Tigran Petrosian, to reach the match. The Reykjavik match itself was publicized as a Cold War confrontation and drew more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since, so a game normally followed by a small specialist audience became, for a few weeks, a story that newspapers outside the chess world followed closely too.
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