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
Hermann Helms their well-respected 1995 book "The Bobby Fischer I Knew And Other Stories" (p. 329), which is the major source for this article. Helms assisted Bobby Fischer in 1951 with his move into organized chess, when he responded to a letter from Bobby's mother Regina Fischer, who was seeking opponents in Brooklyn for her eight-year-old son. Helms encouraged and stimulated the young Fischer, who would develop very rapidly, and become U.S. Champion by age 14 in 1957, later going on to win the World Chess Championship in 1972. There is a small file of ten of his games at chessgames.com. This