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 del Plata (scoring 10/14), a half-point behind Luděk Pachman and Miguel Najdorf. He tied for 4–6th in Santiago (scoring 7½/12) behind Ivkov, Pachman, and Herman Pilnik. At the Zürich International Tournament, spring 1959, Fischer finished a point behind future World Champion Mikhail Tal and a half-point behind Yugoslavian grandmaster Svetozar Gligorić. Although Fischer had ended his formal education at age 16, dropping out of Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, he subsequently taught himself several foreign languages so he could read foreign chess periodicals. According to Latvian chess master Alexander Koblencs, even he and Tal could not match the commitment