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
Bobby Fischer called a legend in his own time." Former World Champion Tigran Petrosian stated that Fischer put more time into chess than the entire Soviet team. Biographers David Edmonds and John Eidinow wrote: Faced with Fischer's extraordinary coolness, his opponents [sic] assurance would begin to disintegrate. A Fischer move, which at first glances looked weak, would be reassessed. It must have a deep master plan behind it, undetectable by mere mortals (more often than not they were right, it did). The US grandmaster Robert Byrne labeled the phenomenon "Fischer-fear". Grandmasters would wilt, their suits would crumple, sweat would glisten on their