This little thing with me and Spassky

by Frederic Friedel
5/5/2025 – "The BBC has posted a 1972 interview with Fischer by James Burke on YouTube," our friend Yasser Seirawan told us. BBC Two had was broadcast this video, which is 35 minutes long, on 2 July, 1972, nine days before the epic match began. "Personally, I thought that it is fantastic, vintage stuff. You see the Fischer that I met in 1992. Engaging, funny, self-assured. But also aware of his own shortcomings." It is really something you don't want to miss.
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James Burke reports from Reykjavik, Iceland, on the World Chess Championship, which sees the outspoken American Bobby Fischer compete against Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. Before a single move has been made, many are already dubbing it the "Match of the Century".

This is a rare chance to meet Fischer, a controversial and secretive man, a man who has been called a genius, a man who lives for chess and who has been obsessed by the game since the age of nine. In an exclusive interview Bobby Fischer talks about his sensational career, the life of a professional chess player, his struggle to gain acceptance for chess in the USA, and his belief that he has been the unofficial champion for the past ten years, but has been denied his chance to compete due to Russia's desire to keep the prestigious title in Soviet hands.

Also taking part in the documentary are Danish chess grandmaster and writer Bent Larsen and grandmaster Svetozar Gligorić of Yugoslavia.

If you click on "...more" in the description below the Youtube video you will find a button that says "Show transcript". The text accompanies the video in real time and allows you to follow things you did not catch. You can also jump to specific positions to find and listen to passages again. This is what the live transcript l looks like when you switch it on:

Since the transcript is automatically generated, you can expect misspellings, such as Gigarich and Len, instead of Gligoric and Bent (Larsen). You can click on the time stamps to jump to different places in the interview.

No other World Champion was more infamous both inside and outside the chess world than Bobby Fischer. On this DVD, a team of experts shows you the winning techniques and strategies employed by the 11th World Champion.

Grandmaster Dorian Rogozenco delves into Fischer’s openings, and retraces the development of his repertoire. What variations did Fischer play, and what sources did he use to arm himself against the best Soviet players? Mihail Marin explains Fischer’s particular style and his special strategic talent in annotated games against Spassky, Taimanov and other greats. Karsten Müller is not just a leading international endgame expert, but also a true Fischer connoisseur.

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Topics: Bobby Fischer
Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.

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