Boris Spassky Boris Spassky Boris Vasilievich Spassky (; born January 30, 1937) is a Russian chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from 1969 to 1972. Spassky played three world championship matches: he lost to Tigran Petrosian in 1966; defeated Petrosian in 1969 to become world champion; then lost to Bobby Fischer in a famous match in 1972. Spassky won the Soviet Chess Championship twice outright (1961, 1973), and twice lost in playoffs (1956, 1963), after tying for first place during the event proper. He was a World Chess Championship candidate on seven occasions (1956, 1965, 1968,
World Chess Championship 1972 an eccentric 29-year-old American, was a vocal critic of the Soviet domination of chess, because he believed that Soviet players gained an unfair advantage by agreeing to short draws among themselves in tournaments. In August 1962 "Sports Illustrated", and then in October the German magazine "Der Spiegel", published Fischer's article "The Russians Have Fixed World Chess", in which he expounded this view. Fischer himself rarely agreed to early draws in unclear positions. The pressure on Spassky was enormous because for the Soviets, chess was part of the political system. While Fischer was often famously critical of his home country ("Americans