Elder: chess player Boris Spassky has died

Boris Spassky, Soviet and Russian grandmaster, tenth world chess champion, two—time USSR champion and ten-time Olympic participant, has died. He had a long sporting life: he started competing in major tournaments in the 1940s and finished his sports career at the dawn of the 21st century. In chess, a traditionally nervous sport, he was able to remain calm and noble, never once appearing in near-sports conflicts. The pages of the biography of the great chess player recall Izvestia.

The child prodigy

Boris Spassky was born on January 30, 1937 in Leningrad. He was the second child in a military family. His grandfather was an archpriest, a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Empire of the IV convocation from Kursk province. In 1941, shortly before Leningrad was besieged, Boris and his older brother George were evacuated from the city. They ended up in an orphanage in the village of Korshik in the Orichevsky district of the Kirov region. There, five-year-old Boris learned to play chess.

Later, Boris's parents, who managed to escape from the besieged Leningrad, settled in the Moscow region and took their sons to themselves. Meanwhile, the family had a third child, a daughter, Iraida, the younger sister of Boris Spassky, who later became a draughts grandmaster.

After the war, the mother of the future grandmaster moved back to Leningrad with her children. Having discovered the chess pavilion in the Kirov City Park of Culture and Recreation, Boris disappeared there from morning to evening, and in 1946 he joined the chess club of the city Palace of Pioneers. His first coach was Vladimir Zak.

Spassky recalled that in those hungry years, the coach fed the student who came to him first, and only then began to sort out chess problems with him.

Spassky's talent was discovered early. After a year of classes, he fulfilled the first-class standard, becoming the youngest first-class chess player in the country. A year later, in 1948, the 11-year-old Spassky won two prestigious tournaments at once — the championship of the Trudovye Reservy Sports Society, held in Minsk, and the Leningrad Youth Championship. It became clear that a new star had appeared in the chess firmament of the USSR. However, Spassky still had to grow up to "adult" chess. Until 1955, he played for the Leningrad team at the national youth championships.

Grandmaster and champion

In 1955, Spassky won the championship in Antwerp and became the world youth chess champion. And a little earlier in the same year, he took part in the USSR Adult Chess Championship for the first time. The final part of the championship was held in Moscow. Then he shared 3rd and 6th places with his rivals, and a few months later, following the results of the tournament in Gothenburg, he became a contender for the title of world champion. This result was counted as the fulfillment of the grandmaster's standard. In the same year, 1955, which was so successful for him, 18-year-old Boris Spassky became the youngest grandmaster in chess history at that time.

The next few years were a series of victories and successful performances at world-class championships for Spassky. He won the Leningrad Championship, became the champion of the First International Tournament of the Central Chess Club of the USSR, and in 1961, playing in Baku, won the USSR championship for the first time. In 1962, he competed at the World Chess Olympiad, held in Varna, Bulgaria, as part of the Soviet national team. Despite his youth, according to experts, he made a significant contribution to the team's victory. Subsequently, Spassky won these competitions five more times as part of the USSR team.

In 1965, at a match in Tbilisi, Boris Spassky defeated Mikhail Tal in an official match of candidates for the chess crown, gaining the right to face the world champion, Soviet grandmaster Tigran Petrosyan. The first attempt was unsuccessful: in a series of matches in Moscow in 1966, Petrosyan managed to defend his title. The next time Spassky had the opportunity to compete for the world chess crown was in 1968, beating Viktor Korchnoi in a challenger match, and a year later he met Petrosian again. This time, Spassky's luck smiled: he won a series of meetings, becoming the tenth world chess champion.

Life with chess

The title of champion remained with Spassky for three years. In 1972, he lost in a match in Reykjavik to American Robert Fischer. However, Spassky still had several decades of active participation in tournaments and victories ahead of him. He won the USSR champion title again in 1973.

It is noteworthy that Boris Spassky met Robert Fischer, who took away his championship title, once again in 1992, playing an unofficial commercial match with him, which the press referred to as a "rematch". It took place on the island of Sveti Stefan and, just like the championship match, ended with Fischer's victory.

Back in the 1960s, Spassky, who graduated from the journalism department of the Philological Faculty of Leningrad University, began publishing articles and essays in the sports press about the competitions in which he participated. At the beginning of this century, sports journalism became his main business: from 2004 to 2006, Boris Spassky served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Chess Week.

Boris Spassky was married three times, and in three marriages he had two sons and a daughter. In recent years, the grandmaster lived surrounded by his family, the children looked after him. Starting in 2006, he suffered two strokes, and in recent years his eyesight has deteriorated significantly. However, according to family acquaintances, from time to time he could play a game of chess with one of his relatives. Since 2010, after the death of Vasily Smyslov, he remained the oldest living world chess champion.