Chess right of a deposed champion to a rematch, and the next champion, Armenian Tigran Petrosian, a player renowned for his defensive and positional skills, held the title for two cycles, 1963–1969. His successor, Boris Spassky from Russia (champion 1969–1972), won games in both positional and sharp tactical style. The next championship, the so-called Match of the Century, saw the first non-Soviet challenger since World War II, American Bobby Fischer, who defeated his Candidates opponents by unheard-of margins and clearly won the world championship match. In 1975, however, Fischer refused to defend his title against Soviet Anatoly Karpov when FIDE did
Scholastic chess in the United States Scholastic chess in the United States Scholastic chess in the United States has progressively grown in recent years, evidenced by the increasing membership numbers of school-aged children in the United States Chess Federation. The onset of scholastic chess in the United States began in the early 1970s due to the "Fischer Boom", the phenomenon of markedly increased interest in chess in the United States due to the ascendency of eventual world champion Bobby Fischer. The first large-scale open national scholastic chess tournament was the National High School Championship, which was started by Bill Goichberg in 1969; the winner of the