12/6/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/5/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/4/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/3/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/2/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/1/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

10/22/2022 – Bobby Fischer was the fifth of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It appeared (first in German) in October. | Foto: YURIKO NAKAO/ REUTERS

10/8/2022 – Boris Spassky was the fourth of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It appeared (first in German) in October.

9/1/2022 – After twenty games the score was 11½-8½ for Challenger Bobby Fischer, who needed 12½ to win the title. In game 21 he had the black pieces, gained a distinct advantage, but then allowed Boris Spassky to get a drawn position. However, when the still-reigning World Champion adjourned, he sealed a losing move. The next day, September 1st, 1972, resigned by telephone on. At 2:35 p.m. Chief Arbiter Lothar Schmid congratulated Fischer and announced in the hall that Bobby was the new champion.

8/13/2022 – After ten games in the World Championship match in Reykjavik, 1972, the score was 6½-3½ for Challenger Bobby Fischer. The match seemed virtually over – in the last eight games Boris Spassky had only managed to score 1½ points. In game 11 Spassky took on the Poisoned Pawn variation of the Najdorf Sicilian. "Fighting with the desperation of the doomed: he sensationally crushed his opponent in the 11th game" (Kasparov). In the twelfth he held Fischer to a comfortable draw. And then came the 13th round. Fischer played, for the first time in a top-level game, the Alekhine Defence. It turned into one of the most exciting battles of the match, and is beautifully annotated by GM Robert Byrne.

8/11/2022 – The French composer and pianist Jason Kouchak is an enthusiastic amateur chess player with considerable playing strength. He has taken part in various Opens, including the Open in Gibraltar in 2009, where he met a famous contemporary.

8/4/2022 – After the first two traumatic games World Champion Boris Spassky was leading 2-0 in the Match of the Century. But then Fischer started to play and struck back: in the next eight games he scored 6½ points, chalking up a 6.5-3.5 lead. Games 8, 9 and 10 were quite spectacular, and are the subject of today's report – exactly fifty years after game ten. Younger players will also learn about "adjournments" and how exactly "sealed moves" were handled. Some were born after these practices were abandoned.

7/24/2022 – Today we offer readers a glimpse of what had been happening behind the scenes of “The Match of The Century”, especially in the Russian camp, exactly fifty years ago. A tense Boris Spassky, cajoled by seconds Efim Geller and Nikolai Krogius, nevertheless failed to perform, to the dismay of his friends and admirers. It’s also the story of a gamble that could have hurtled Bobby down the precipice in that fateful Game 6 of the match. A cautionary tale and object lesson for aspiring players.

7/11/2022 – Half a century ago, exactly on this day, the most famous chess match in history began: Boris Spassky vs Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik, Iceland. Five year ago we celebrated the event by reporting on it, game for game, as if it was all taking place live. Today we bring you links to all the reports we published at the time, starting with our full report on the drama that surrounded game one. It contains original film footage which nobody should miss.

2/14/2022 – In 1972, the World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik made headlines all over the world, and during and after the match the games were analysed in detail. One of the highlights of the match was game 10, in which Fischer won a difficult endgame after getting the advantage in a complicated middlegame. 50 years after the match Karsten Müller invited the ChessBase readers to take another look at this classic. Here is what the readers found. | Photo: Skáksamband Íslands – Icelandic Chess Federation

2/5/2022 – The sharp endgame seen in game 10 of the 1972 match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky has been analysed countless times. But there are still many open questions and new discoveries to be made. Karsten Müller invites you to help him solve the riddles emerging from this fascinating endgame.

1/30/2022 – When Boris Spassky, World Champion from 1969 to 1972, had to play the Sicilian with the white pieces, he seemed to get particularly inspired. Today, the living legend from Leningrad turns 85, and to celebrate him we share a selection of brilliant games he played with 1.e4 c5 during his illustrious career. | Photo: Gerhard Hund

9/25/2020 – In this Power Play Show Grandmaster Daniel King looks at a provocative, dangerous and entertaining line of the King's Gambit: 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nc3!? Qh4+ 4.Ke2 which Steinitz, Keres (pictured) and King himself used to play. The march of the king looks crazy but the whole line is surprisingly powerful and dangerous. | Power Play is on air most Fridays at 17:00 UK (18:00 CEST, 11:00 EST) on playchess.com. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. | Photo: Valter Heuer (Archive)

9/9/2020 – On September 9, 2010, ten years ago, the Danish Grandmaster Bent Larsen died in Argentina where he lived with his wife Laura Benediz Benedini, a lawyer, whom he had met in 1980. Larsen was born on March 4, 1935, and in the 1960s he was arguably the most successful tournament player and definitely one of the best players in the world. He is famous for his fighting spirit, his optimism, his original play and his entertaining writing. | Photo: Bent Larsen © Hans Peters

7/17/2020 – In this Power Play Show, Grandmaster Daniel King continues to look at attacking games by Boris Spassky, World Champion from 1969 to 1972, who was a universal player with a keen sense for the attack and tactical ideas. | Power Play is on air most Fridays at 17:00 UK (18:00 CEST, 11:00 EST) on playchess.com. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. | Photo: Herbert Behrens / Anefo; / CC BY-SA 3.0 NL

7/10/2020 – In this Power Play Show, grandmaster Daniel King focuses on an exciting attacking game played by tenth world champion Boris Spassky when he was merely 18 years old. He also looks at a mate-in-three problem that even had him confused for a while! | Power Play is on air most Fridays at 17:00 UK (18:00 CEST, 11:00 EST) on playchess.com. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer.

5/18/2020 – As we promised in our last article, we now proceed to another round of guessing the movie stills. This time we take a look at films which are exclusively from the 1960s. The films are "From Russia with Love", "The Fire Within", "Becket" and "The Thomas Crown Affair". Once again, you are very welcome to participate in our little movie guessing quiz, where you have to guess which chess board still is from which movie.

4/12/2020 – In part II of the Frederic Chronicles, the co-founder of ChessBase, Frederic Friedel, recounts his experiences with Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer. Did you know that Tal won the World Blitz Championship in 1988 while being inebriated, for the better part of the tournament? Or that Fischer made plans to challenge Vishy Anand for a match in Fischer Random Chess? These and much more untold stories come to the fore with Frederic's singular accounts. Read this article and enrich yourself with nuggets of priceless chess history.

4/3/2020 – The fourth and final round of the "Match of the Century" between the USSR and the "Rest of the World" in Belgrade ended with a 5:5 tie. Larsen (against Stein) and Uhlmann (against Taimanov) scored for the "World" while Smyslov (against Olafsson) and Keres (against Ivkov) scored for the USSR. In the end the USSR won the match 20.5:19.5, with the narrowest possible margin. | Photo: Group photo with players and officials