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
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