World Chess Championship 1972 World Chess Championship 1972 The World Chess Championship 1972 was a match for the World Chess Championship between challenger Bobby Fischer of the United States and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. The match took place in the Laugardalshöll arena in Reykjavík, Iceland, and has been dubbed the Match of the Century. Fischer became the first American born in the United States to win the world title, and the second American overall (Wilhelm Steinitz, the first world champion, became a naturalized American citizen in 1888). Fischer's win also ended, for a short time, 24 years of Soviet domination
Bobby Fischer makes him tick" and described him as "a troubled human being" with "obvious personal problems". Valery Krylov, advisor to Anatoly Karpov and a specialist in the "psycho-physiological rehabilitation of sportsmen", believed Fischer suffered from schizophrenia. Psychologist Joseph G. Ponterotto, from second-hand sources, concludes that "Bobby did not meet all the necessary criteria to reach diagnoses of schizophrenia or Asperger syndrome. The evidence is stronger for paranoid personality disorder." Magnús Skúlason, a chess player, psychiatrist and head doctor of Sogn Mental Asylum for the Criminally Insane, befriended Fischer towards the end of Fischer's life. From "Endgame", Fischer's 2011 biography by Frank