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
San Antonio 1972 chess tournament Gligoric, Paul Keres and Bent Larsen, and some promising stars, among them Brazilian Henrique da Costa Mecking and future world champion Anatoly Karpov. As a Category XII event (average rating of 2539), the San Antonio Church's Fried Chicken Inc. First International Chess Tournament was strong enough to be regarded at the time the most important chess competition to be held in american soil since New York 1924 (which attracted at the time elite players like Emanuel Lasker, Alexander Alekhine, José Raul Capablanca, Frank Marshall and Richard Réti, among many others). Newly crowned world champion Fischer and deposed champion Spassky were