World Chess Championship 1969 World Chess Championship 1969 The 1969 World Chess Championship was played between Tigran Petrosian and Boris Spassky in Moscow from April 14 to June 17, 1969. Spassky won. The 1967 Interzonal Tournament was played in Sousse, Tunisia in October and November. The first six placegetters qualified for the Candidates, along with Boris Spassky and Mikhail Tal who were seeded into the Candidates matches as finalists of the previous tournament. A major controversy occurred when Bobby Fischer, who was leading the tournament with seven wins and three draws in ten rounds, abandoned the event over a dispute with the organisers. Because
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