Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The 1972 World Chess Championship

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in almost every arena: space, sports, and of course the military. Everything they competed in was designed to show the superiority of their respective systems. In 1972, one of the greatest cold war rivalries came to a head in Reykjavík, Iceland. It didn’t take place at a sporting event or on a battlefield. Rather, it took place over a period of two months on a chessboard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in almost every arena, space, sports, and of course the military. Everything they competed in was designed to show the superiority of their respective systems. In 1972, one of the greatest Cold War rivalries came to a head in Reykjavik Iceland. It didn't take place at a sporting event or on a battlefield. Rather, it took place over a period of two months on a chess board. Learn more about the 1972 World Chess Championship, a.k.a. the match of the century on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Skillshare. To paraphrase the great Napoleon dynamite, you have to have skills. There's a whole universe of things you can learn to better yourself, and Skillshare can help you do it.

Some of the most popular classes on Skillshare include iPhone photography, Adobe Illustrator, watercolor painting, interior design, and creating videos for YouTube. With Skillshare Premium, you can have unlimited access to everything for as low as 825 per month. Go to Everything- Everywhere.com slash Skillshare to get a free two-week trial of Skillshare premium membership, or just click on the link in the show notes. To be completely honest, the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and chess really wasn't much of a rivalry. The Soviet Union completely dominated the upper ranks of chess for decades. From 1948 to 2007, every world chess champion, save for one, all came from the Soviet Union to Russia. In fact, you can take it back as far as 1927, where the champion was a Russian who fled to France because of the Communist Revolution.

Soviet chess was a machine. They recruited bright players with talent at a very young age. The Soviets took chess seriously and treated it as a sport, not a game. Soviet chess players would be rigorously trained in studied games of past grandmasters. They would also analyze and drill on opening moves, and they would be able to constantly practice against some of the best players in the world. Coming into 1972, the reigning world champion was Boris Spaskey. Spaskey was a product of the Soviet chess system. He was a world junior champion and a two-time Soviet champion.

He played for the world championship and lost to fellow Soviet Tigran Petrosian in 1966 and then beat him for the world championship in 1969. Not only was Spaskey good, but he had the entire Soviet chess system behind him. Spaskey's challenger in 1972 was American Bobby Fisher. Fisher couldn't have been more different than Spaskey. Bobby was born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn by a single mother. He never knew his father, but later investigation showed that it was probably Hungarian mathematician, physicist Paul Nemone. Fisher was a chess prodigy.

He learned the game at the age of six from a chess set purchased at a local candy shop. His sister quickly lost interest in the game and his mother didn't have time to play. So he would play most of his early games against himself. That year he found a book on chess when his family went on. vacation and he studied it religiously. Fisher became consumed with chess, so much so that it worried his mother. Eventually, she tried to put a classified ad in a local newspaper to look for other children to play chess with Bobby, but the paper didn't know how to classify it and rejected it. Fisher eventually found his way to chess clubs in New York and began to quickly excel. In

1956, he became the youngest U.S. chess champion at the age of 13. The next year at the age of 14, he became the youngest United States champion, a record he still holds. At the age of 15, he became the youngest grandmaster in history. At the age of 16, he became the youngest person to qualify for the World Championship Candidates Tournament. Fisher ended up winning eight U.S. championships out of eight attempts, a record that still stands.

In 1964, he won the U.S. championship with an 11-0 record, the best record ever in the history of the tournament. He began competing internationally and found a great deal of success. At the 1962 candidates tournament, he accused the Soviets of collusion, saying that they would quickly draw matches against each other to save their energy and time for their matches against Fisher. By and large, the accusations were believed to be true. Fisher had a very abrasive personality. He was extremely arrogant and very demanding. Throughout the 1960s, he was extremely flaky. He went into semi-retirement twice,

constantly objecting to tournament conditions, formats, and prize money. However, in 1970, he finally made a serious run at the World Championship. Over 1970 and 1971, he crushed his competitors in a way that no one else has before or since. In a lead-up to the World Championship, he defeated Soviet Grandmaster Mark Tominov 6 to nothing, a lopsided score that is almost unheard of in international competitions. He then did it again beating Danish Grandmaster Brent Larson, 6 to nothing. By the time he became the official challenger for the World Championship, he had set a record high ELO score of 2,785, 125 points higher than the next highest person, which is still a record that stands today. However, despite all of his success, there was one person he had never beaten, Boris Spaskey.

He had lost to him three times and tied twice. Fisher began being stubborn again about match conditions. Fisher wanted the match to take place in Yugoslavia, and Spaski wanted to take place in Reykjavik, Iceland. Fisher eventually agreed to Reykjavik, but only if the prize money would increase. Eventually, a British businessman donated $125,000, doubling the prize money, making it the largest purse for a chess match ever. Eventually, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called Fisher to conjure him to go to Iceland. The match format was the best of 24 games, a win being one point. and a draw being a half point.

Fisher needed 12.5 points to become the world champion. If the match was a draw at 12 points, Spaskey would retain the title. Fisher didn't show up for the opening ceremony on July 1st. When the first game started on July 11th, Fisher didn't show up. Spaskey moved his piece, hit the clock, and waited nine minutes. Fisher finally entered the room and proceeded to lose his match. After his loss, Fisher began making more demands of the tournament. officials, including the removal of all the cameras, which he said were making too much noise.

The officials refused to move the cameras, so Fisher forfeited Game 2, something absolutely unheard of at this level of chess. Fisher was about to board a plane and leave Iceland when he received a flood of telegrams and phone calls, including one again from Henry Kissinger. Spaskey, now up two to nothing, agreed to have the games played in a back room with a single television camera that didn't make any sound, and no audience. There are people who think that Fisher's antics up to this point were all designed to psych Spaskey out. Based on how things went from here, it might just have worked.

After spotting Spaskey, the world champion of full two games, Fisher managed to win game three, his first ever win against Spaskey. He tied game four and won game five. Game six was one of the greatest games in chess history. Fisher never before used an opening move called the Queen's Gambit. In fact, he was quite vocal about how it was a bad opening move. The Soviets purposely never bothered to prepare for this because they thought it was out of the question that he would ever use it. Fisher crushed Spaskey so bad that at the end of Game 6,

Spaskey was amused, smiled, and applauded Fisher. After this, Fisher had the lead and the championship was in the bag. Spaskey won only one more game. The match ended after Game 21 with the final score of 12.5 to 8.5. Fisher returned to the United States as a celebrity. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He appeared on The Tonight Show, and he received over a million dollars in endorsement deals, and he turned every one of them down.

It was the last public chess tournament that Bobby Fisher participated in for over 20 years. He became increasingly paranoid and recluse. He began spouting conspiracy theories, and he spent years on the run from American law enforcement. Many people believe he may have suffered from schizophrenia. In 1975, he was stripped of the World Championship because he refused to defend it. After Fisher was no longer the champion, the Soviet chess machine went right back to dominating the world of chess. They owned the World Championship for another 30 years. Bobby Fisher actually played Boris Spaski again in 1992 in Serbia, where he beat him again,

17 and a half to 12 and a half. Even after he stopped playing competitively, he appears to have never lost his genius for chess. After the Serbian match, he stayed with the Polger family, which I did a previous episode on. He spent several weeks helping to teach the Polger Sisters. In 1981, he briefly stayed with a Canadian Grandmaster named Peter Bialis. Fisher played 17 games with him and beat him in all 17. Bobby Fisher died in 2008. Before his death, however, there were rumors of him appearing online and playing chess under an assumed name.

Grandmaster Nigel Short was beaten eight games in a row online by some of the last. someone he believed to be Bobby Fisher, given his level of play and knowledge of other grandmasters. Boris Spaski is still alive today at the age of 84. He is the world's oldest surviving world champion. The world chess championship was the first of two great competitions between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972. In chess, the United States beat the Soviets at their game. In the other competition, the Soviets beat the Americans at their game. That happened to be on a basketball court. But that is a story for another episode. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson.

Today's five-star review comes from listener Krister over at Podcast Republic. They write, Fantastic Podcast that keeps it informative, but still keeps charm and personality. I've learned a lot by listening to this podcast, a listener from Sweden. Tuximaket, Krister. I've been able to explore quite a bit of your country, traveling from Umi to Malma. I've even had the pleasure of tasting Soostroming on the island of Ulva, served up by the Susshrumming king himself. And don't worry, I won't hold Suss-Strumming against you. Remember, if you leave a review, or send me a question via email or social media, you too can have it read

on the show.