Fischer–Spassky (1972 Match)
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Fischer–Spassky (1972 Match)
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 in Reykjavík, Iceland, and has been dubbed the Match of the Century. Fischer became the first US-born player to win the world title. Fischer's win also ended, for a short time, 24 years of Soviet domination of the World Championship. Fischer won the right to challenge for the World Championship after some dominant performances during the qualification cycle, in which he defeated some of the world's leading players by unprecedented margins. The first game was played on July11, 1972. The 21st and last game, begun on August31, was after 40 moves, with Spassky resigning the next day without resuming play. Fischer won the match 12½–8½, becoming the eleventh undisputed world champion. The match was covered in the United States on ABC's Wide World ...
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New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ...
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Lev Polugaevsky
Lev Abramovich Polugaevsky ( rus, Лев Абрамович Полугаевский, p=pəlʊɡɐˈjefskʲɪj; 20 November 1934 – 30 August 1995) was a Soviet chess player. He was awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1962 and was a frequent contender for the World Chess Championship, World Championship, although he never achieved that title. He was one of the strongest players in the world from the early 1960s until the late 1980s, as well as a distinguished author and chess opening, opening theorist whose contributions in this field remain important to the present day. Career Lev Polugaevsky was born in Mahilyow, Mogilev, in the Soviet Union (now Mahilyow, Belarus), and, after being evacuated during the Second World War, grew up in Samara, Kuybyshev (modern Samara). He began playing chess around the age of 10. In 1948, he attracted the attention of Candidate Master Alexy Ivashin, who became his first teacher. International Master Lev Aronin, who live ...
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Vasily Smyslov
Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov (; 24 March 1921 – 27 March 2010) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster who was the seventh World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958. He was a Candidates Tournament, Candidate for the World Chess Championship on eight occasions (1948, 1950, 1953, 1956, 1959, 1965, 1983, and 1985). Smyslov twice tied for first place at the USSR Chess Championships (1949, 1955), and his total of 17 Chess Olympiad medals won is an all-time record. In five European Team Championships, Smyslov won ten gold medals. Smyslov remained active and successful in competitive chess well after the age of sixty. Despite his failing eyesight, he remained active in the occasional composition of chess problems and studies until shortly before his death in 2010. Besides chess, he was an accomplished baritone singer. Early years Smyslov was born in Moscow, into a Russians, Russian family. He first became interested in chess at the age of six. His father, Vasily Osipovich Smyslov, ...
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Lajos Portisch
Lajos Portisch (born 4 April 1937) is a Hungarian chess Grandmaster, whose positional style earned him the nickname, the "Hungarian Botvinnik". One of the strongest players from the early 1960s into the late 1980s, he participated in twelve consecutive Interzonals from 1962 through 1993, qualifying for the World Chess Championship Candidates Cycle a total of eight times (1965, 1968, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1985, and 1988). Portisch set several all-time records in Chess Olympiads. In Hungarian Chess Championships, he either shared the title or won it outright a total of eight times (1958, 1959, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1971, 1975, and 1981). He won many strong international tournaments during his career. In 2004, Portisch was awarded the title of ' Nemzet Sportolója' (Sportsman of the Nation), Hungary's highest national sports achievement award. His main hobby is singing operatic arias; he has a fine baritone voice, a quality shared by Vasily Smyslov, a chess world champion and g ...
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Wolfgang Uhlmann
Wolfgang Uhlmann (29 March 193524 August 2020) was a German chess grandmaster. He was East Germany's most successful chess player between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s, reaching the 1971 Candidates Tournament. During his career, Uhlmann played many of the top players of the time and won the East Germany Chess Championships 11 times. Uhlmann continued to play chess into his later years, before dying at the age of 85 in Dresden. Chess career Wolfgang Uhlmann was born on 29 March 1935 in Dresden, Germany. His father, Alfred, a baker, taught him the game at the age of six but, at age sixteen, he contracted tuberculosis and spent one and a half years in a sanatorium, where he studied the game relentlessly. He emerged as a strong player, progressing to the title of German Youth Champion in 1951. He learned the trade of letterpress printing, but his career in chess prevented him from practicing it. Uhlmann won the 1954, 1955 and 1958 East Germany Chess Championships, and in 1956 ...
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Mark Taimanov
Mark Evgenievich Taimanov (; 7 February 1926 – 28 November 2016) was one of the leading Soviet and Russian chess players, among the world's top 20 players from 1946 to 1971. A prolific chess author, Taimanov was awarded the title of Grandmaster in 1952 and in 1956 won the USSR Chess Championship. He was a World Championship Candidate in 1953 and 1971, and several opening variations are named after him. Taimanov was also a world-class concert pianist. Early life Taimanov was born in Kharkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine), where his parents studied at the time. They moved to Leningrad when he was six months old. His father Evgeny Zakharovich Taimanov was Jewish; his family escaped to Kharkiv from Smolensk during World War I. Evgeny was a student at the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute and later made a career as a head engineer at the Kirov Plant and the Hydraulic Plant, but left it to work as an engineer at the Leningrad Conservatory and various Leningrad theaters after his brother and ...
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Robert Hübner
Robert Hübner (6 November 1948 – 5 January 2025) was a German chess grandmaster, chess writer, and papyrologist. He was one of the world's leading players in the 1970s and early 1980s. Chess career At eighteen, Hübner was joint winner of the West German Chess Championship. In 1965 he won, together with Hans Ree, the Niemeyer tournament for European players under 20. His International Master (IM) title was awarded in 1969 and his Grandmaster (GM) title in 1971. He reached third place in the FIDE world ranking list in 1980. Between 1971 and 1991 (loss to Jan Timman), Hübner played in four Candidates Tournaments for the World Championship. Three ended in controversial circumstances: * In 1971, he forfeited a closely contested quarter final to Tigran Petrosian, after blundering a piece in the 7th game in a drawn position. * In 1980–81, his best result, after winning the quarter and semi final (against the Hungarian players Adorjan and Portisch), he reached the final b ...
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Efim Geller
Efim Petrovich Geller (; ; 8 March 1925 – 17 November 1998) was a Soviet chess player and world-class grandmaster at his peak. He won the Soviet Championship twice (in 1955 and 1979) and was a Candidate for the World Championship on six occasions (1953, 1956, 1962, 1965, 1968, and 1971). He won four Ukrainian SSR Championship titles (in 1950, 1957, 1958, and 1959) and shared first in the 1991 World Seniors' Championship, winning the title outright in 1992. His wife Oksana was a ballet dancer while his son Alexander was also a chess master. Geller was coach to World Champions Boris Spassky and Anatoly Karpov. He was also an author. Early life Geller grew up in Odessa, Soviet Union, and was Jewish. He was a fine basketball player, and earned his doctorate in physical education before specialising in chess. His father was a First Category chess player. His development as a top player was delayed by the inception of World War II. Geller's first notable result was sixth plac ...
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Bent Larsen
Jørgen Bent Larsen (4 March 1935 – 9 September 2010) was a Danish chess Grandmaster (chess), grandmaster and author. Known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play, he was the second-strongest non-Soviet Union, Soviet player, behind only Bobby Fischer, for much of the 1960s and 1970s. He is considered to be the strongest player born in Denmark and the strongest from Scandinavia until the emergence of Magnus Carlsen. Larsen was a six-time Danish Chess Championship, Danish Champion and a Candidates Tournament, Candidate for the World Chess Championship on four occasions, reaching the semifinal three times. He had multiple wins over all seven World Champions who held the title from 1948 to 1985: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, and Anatoly Karpov, but lifetime negative scores against them. From the early 1970s onward, he divided his years between Las Palmas and Buenos Aires with his Argentine people, Argenti ...
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Max Euwe
Machgielis "Max" Euwe (; May 20, 1901 – November 26, 1981) was a Dutch chess player, mathematician, author, and chess administrator. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion, a title he held from 1935 until 1937. He served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978. Early years, education, and professional career Euwe was born in the Watergraafsmeer, in Amsterdam. He studied mathematics at the University of Amsterdam under the founder of intuitionistic logic, L.E.J. Brouwer (who later became his friend and for whom he held a funeral oration), and earned his doctorate in 1926 under Roland Weitzenböck. He taught mathematics, first in Rotterdam, and later at a girls' Lyceum in Amsterdam. After World War II, Euwe became interested in computer programming and was appointed professor in this subject at the universities of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam and University of Tilburg, Tilburg, retiring from Tilbu ...
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William Lombardy
William James Joseph Lombardy (December 4, 1937 – October 13, 2017) was an American chess grandmaster, chess writer, teacher, and former Catholic priest. He was one of the leading American chess players during the 1950s and 1960s, and a contemporary of Bobby Fischer, whom he seconded during the World Chess Championship 1972. He won the World Junior Chess Championship in 1957, the only person to win that tournament with a perfect score. Lombardy led the U.S. Student Team to Gold in the 1960 World Student Team Championship in Leningrad. Formative years Lombardy was born to an Italian-American father and Polish-American mother. Lombardy grew up at 838 Beck Street, Bronx, New York City, in an apartment with his parents and two other families. "Bill recalls that his family had financial problems when he was young. His parents both worked and they all shared an apartment with his grandmother, an aunt and a cousin, until his second year in grammar school, when they moved to the ...
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