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
Chess Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" and Satyajit Ray's "The Chess Players". Chess is also present in contemporary popular culture. For example, the characters in "Star Trek" play a futuristic version of the game called "Tri-Dimensional Chess". "Wizard's Chess" is featured in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" plays. The hero of "Searching for Bobby Fischer" struggles against adopting the aggressive and misanthropic views of a world chess champion. Chess is used as the core theme in the musical "Chess" by Tim Rice, Björn Ulvaeus, and Benny Andersson. The thriller film "Knight Moves" is about a chess grandmaster who is accused of being a