Boris Vasilievich Spassky (Leningrad, January 30, 1937-) is a Soviet-French-Russian chess player, International Grandmaster. Between 1969 and 1972 he was the tenth official World Chess Champion, sixfold Olympic Champion in team and twice European Champion.

He won the Soviet World Chess Championship (in 1961 and 1973) and tied for first place twice (in 1956 and 1963) but lost the battles in playoffs. He was a World Chess Championship Candidate on seven occasions.

In 2003 he was selected to the members of World Chess Hall of Fame.

It is alleged that at the age of five he learned to play chess on a train that rescued the resident population of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) that was threatened by the German troops. After some time Spassky became the most promising Soviet talent since Mikhail Botvinnik. He even beat Botvinnik in a simultaneous game when he was just 10 years old.

At the age of eighteen he won the World Junior Chess Championship in Antwerp with the score of 14/16. With this result he became a Grandmaster, the youngest ever chess player who gained this title.

He shared 1st-3rd places on 11½/19, with Mark Taimanov and Yuri Averbakh in the Soviet final held in Leningrad in 1956. The playoff, however, was won by Taimanov and he became the champion. Later in that year Spassky tied for first with Tolush in a strong Leningrad tournament.

In subsequent years, Spassky went into a slump. He failed to advance to the next two Interzonals in 1958 and 1962. Between 1958 and 1961 he did not perform well during the tournaments. This period was burdened with a crisis in his first marriage that ended in divorce in 1961. Spassky even closed his relationship with his trainer, the Grandmaster, Tolush. He wrote about this period: “I had three tough years from 1959 to 1961. All my energies were taken by these years and I could not come up with anything positive.”

He decided upon a switch in trainers, from the volatile attacker Tolush, to the calmer strategist Igor Bondarevsky in 1961. The success of this change was proved by winning his first Soviet Championship with one and a half point advantage.

He shared 1st-4th places and then finally won first place in the Interzonal held in Amsterdam in 1964. In the pairing based tournament he first beat Paul Keres 6-4 and then defeated Efim Geller 5,5-2,5. Then in the World Chess Candidate’s Final he beat Mikhail Tal 7-4 and could challenge the then World Champion, Tigran Petrosian.

Spassky was considered the favourite against Petrosian in the pairing based match as he was a top-rated player at that time while Petrosian was ranked the 8th. Finally Petrosian defended his world champion title by winning 12,5-11,5.

In the following World Chess Championship cycle he gained the right to challenge Petrosian. This time he could take revenge: Spassky triumphed by winning 12,5-10,5 and became the tenth official Chess World Champion in 1969.

Then came the Match of the Century. The whole world focused their attention to the Fischer-Spassky Chess World Championship Final match in 1972. Fischer was famous for his uncommon claims and was acting his usual himself this time as well. He had such requests that the whole match almost failed. Eventually the encounter started in Reykjavík.

Spassky won the first game then for the second Fischer did not return because of the cameras in the room. So Spassky led by 2-0. Fischer was not willing to continue the match unless they removed the cameras. The third match took place in a small room and was won by Fischer. After removing all the cameras they could move back to the stage. Then Fischer was unstoppable: he won the 5th, 6th, 8th and 10th games while Spassky could only succeed in the 11th game. Fischer built a lead 7-5 at halftime. In the second half Spassky could not win a game while Fischer could win twice, in the 13th and 21st games, so the final result became 12,5-8,5. With this, Fischer could take the world champion title and broke the Russian hegemony in chess that had existed since 1948.

After loosing the world champion title Spassky could not get very close to it again.

He played a rematch against Fischer in 1992 where the American won 17,5-12,5.

He suffered a minor stroke in October 2006 during a performance in San Francisco. He suffered another stroke in 2010 that left him paralyzed on his left side.

Spassky is the oldest living former World Champion. 

His highest rating according to Chessmetrics historical rating system was 2773.

Sources: https://hu.wikipedia.org; http://www.chessmetrics.com