What lesson should the modern chess player take from the life of Boris Spassky, who passed away last week at the age of 88? In some accounts he is reduced to the status of a symbol or placeholder: a romantic spirit in contrast to the rigidity of the Soviet system. A foil for Fischer and as well as his final victim in the American’s wild 1971-72 run to the title. A cautionary tale (again, in contrast to Fischer’s work ethic) about the dangers of overconfidence and lack of preparation. In so many ways is Spassky’s story framed by his losses, a Sonny Liston to Fischer’s Muhammad Ali.
And, let’s be clear, Spassky’s losses are truly incredible. Games 6, 10, and 13 from the 1972 World Championship match are all brilliant jewels in the collection of chess history, each wonderfully unique. Spassky was on the losing side of one on Karpov’s greatest wins as well, a technical masterpiece from their 1974 Candidates match. And who could forget this finale, courtesy of Tigran Petrosian in their 1966 World Championship match:
What are we to make of Spassky? To untangle him from Fischer is a challenge. That the world championship was a burden to him comes through loud and clear from his obituary: “You can’t imagine how relieved I was when Fischer took the title off me,” he said, anticipating Ding Liren. In many respects any criticism of his approach in the match feels unkind. The stakes were incredibly high — beyond the geopolitics of the Cold War rivalry, the Soviet Union was playing the part of the world’s worst chess parent, ready with gifts and status for winners and quick to punish or humiliate those who lost — but how was one supposed to stop Fischer in 1972? Then again, Spassky’s participation in the 1992 match felt more like a prop in a publicity stunt, or perhaps more accurately a cynical money grab, taking place is it did against the genocide of the Yugoslav Wars and Fischer’s anti-Semitic ravings.
And that’s the problem in a nutshell: you start a paragraph about Spassky and all too often you end up writing about Fischer.
Boris Spassky is the only world champion I’ve met in person, thanks to his visit to the Mechanics Institute in October 2006 and my involvement with the club as a member of the Mechanics US Chess League team. I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember much about what he said: I was young then and not so cognizant of how unusual and fleeting these encounters with history can be and a lot of life has happened in the meantime. Somewhere out there exists a picture of me and a few other SF chess players and Spassky, but that’s buried somewhere as deeply as my memories. I remember that Spassky was convivial, welcoming, that it was a pleasure to be around him, and that’s about it.
I don’t know exactly what this says about me as a human being, but when I learned about Spassky’s death, my first thought was a chess move, specifically Rh1!!
Is there a better (or more flamboyant) rook sacrifice in chess history? Here’s Larsen, fresh off a great run of chess, demanding to play first board over Fischer, then running out some hypermodern nonsense against the World Champ. And Spassky just completely runs him over, not in any conventional way, such as 14 … Qh4, but with 14 … Rh1!!, the kind of move that most people only dream about making, much less with the whole chess world watching in rapt amazement.
Imagine, for a moment, the shock of seeing Rh1 appear on the board. Larsen accepted the gift — what else to do, really? — but resigned after 15 Rxh1 g2 16 Rf1 (if 16 Rg1 Qh4+ 17 Kd1 Qh1 and wins) 16 … Qh4+ 17 Kd1 gxf1=Q+ as it’s now mate in two.
But wait, this might not even be the best rook sacrifice of Spassky’s career. A decade earlier, paired against another creative genius in David Bronstein, Spassky played the King’s Gambit and arrived at the following position:
The vast majority of human beings would play 15 Qxe2; a few creative souls might find the improvement 15 Rf2! Instead Spassky played the wonderful 15 Nd6, making the argument, just as he did against Larsen, that a rook can be worth an entire tempo. Here’s Kasparov’s assessment, from the third volume of My Great Predecessors:
After the natural 15 Rf2! Nf8 16 Rxe2 Be6 17 Rae1 White has the initiative, but Black has considerable defensive possibilities. Perhaps in this case too he would have lost the game, but then we would not now be annotating it…. Spassky’s sudden, thunderous stroke sharply changes the situation…. Against Bronstein he could not deny himself the pleasure of landing such a blow.
Kasparov’s section on Spassky is full of examples of these flights of fancy. Here’s another from early in Spassky’s career:
White is down an exchange, but that didn’t stop the future champ from investing another piece — yet again, we have a sacrifice of a whole rook: 22 Nxe4! Qxe4 23 Qxe4 Rxe4 24 Bxd6 Rbe8 25 Rxg5+ Kh8 26 Bxc5 and black faces an unpleasant defensive task:
What does it mean to play chess like this? Kasparov, writing about yet another one of Spassky’s games, argued that Spassky’s instincts as a showman were irrepressible:
There was no need for such excitement. Nevertheless, Spassky, an artist by nature, simply could not deny himself (and the spectators!) the pleasure of playing more spectacularly. In the period of his ascent to the chess heights he was notable for his phenomenal intuition, especially when conducting an attack, and at times he did not trouble himself with precise calculation.
At the risk of once again defining Spassky against Fischer, I’d put it this way: whereas Fischer was driven by his desire to find the right moves, Spassky’s imagination was often captured by the “wrong” moves, the ideas that most people’s brains reject immediately as impossible, and his instinct for such solutions led him to be part of some of the most artistic games of the twentieth century. Karpov put it well: “at the board he could devise something that you would not find an any book.”
It’s generally considered good practice to study the games of past champions, but it’s not always clear what the student is supposed to find in them. Beyond the general assimilation of tactics and strategy, I’d argue that the purpose of studying such games is to find a chess hero, someone who has a similar feeling about the nature of chess while executing this understanding at a much higher level.
As a teenager I moved from the past towards the present, lingering first over the games of Morphy and Capablanca, then Fischer and Alekhine, then Alexander Morozevich. As much as I admire all these players, I can’t say that their styles mesh with mine. As an adult I’ve tried to remake my chess in the style of a Carlsen or post-2000 Kramnik, a collector of small advantages, with limited success. I don’t have the patience or attention to detail for the endgame grind; it brings me little joy.
You’ve probably already guessed at what it took me writing this piece to figure out: that my most compatible figure among the legends of chess history is Boris Spassky. When Spassky says,
My forte was the middlegame. I had a good feeling for the critical moments of play. This undoubtedly compensated for my lack of opening preparation and possibly, not altogether perfect play in the endgame. In my games things did not often reach the endgame!
I find myself nodding in agreement: there’s no need for the endgame if you take care of things earlier! Another of Kasparov’s descriptions of Spassky also hits home:
Spassky played gambits not from a striving for originality or a desire to revive the spirit of past masters, but because the resulting positions were close to his heart. A strong, mobile center, active piece play, the prospect of an attack on the king — here he was in his element.
It’s no coincidence that I love Spassky’s best sacrifices so much: they come from a set of beliefs about how chess should work, if not from a similar level of skill.
At the risk of being accused of self-indulgence for adding one of my own games to a piece about one of the all-time greats, here’s a moment in which I felt like I was channeling Spassky:
Similar to some of Spassky’s sacrifices, there are a variety of winning moves. The most obvious, the one I’d planned a few moves back, is 20 Ra5 a6 21 Bxb8 Kxb8 22 Rxa6. This is a relatively straightforward solution, but then I started asking questions. Why should I trade off my beautiful Bd6? What is my knight doing out there on g5? Shouldn’t there be a better way to finish off the attack?
There’s one answer to all three, and that is 20 Ne4! To borrow from the Kasparov’s assessment of Spassky quoted earlier, I simply could not deny myself the pleasure of playing such a move, despite the fact that I knew that it was unnecessary and added a small measure of risk if I’d calculated incorrectly.
The point is that after 20 … dxe4 21 Qxc4+! brings the queen into the attack:
The b-pawn is pinned to Rxb8 mate, so black should try 21 … Qc6 22 Qxb5! Qxb5 23 Rxb5 Nc6 24 Ra6 and it’s all over; the Nc6 can’t move without catastrophe, but it can’t stay on c6 either:
This sequence feels very much to me in the style of Spassky’s genius for impossible moves. The knight can’t move to e4? Yes it can — and then the queen will take a pawn that a moment ago seemed to be the strongest point in the black pawn chain. Ultimately black will be unable to resist the attack, despite trading the queens.
What lesson should the modern chess player take from the life of Boris Spassky? In a world of so much pawn-grabbing and opening preparation, Spassky was an artist, as concerned with beauty as with his place in chess history. On one level this is an oversimplification, on another it helps to explain Spassky’s entire career, particularly in relation to Fischer. His aesthetic sense made it impossible to dodge Fischer, either at the 1970 Olympiad, where he was crowned in glory, or after the forfeited second game of the 1972 match, when a lesser player might have let Fischer implode and walked away. In Spassky’s own words,
As world champion I consider myself obliged to play constantly against the grandmasters who are closest of all to the chess throne. Therefore I had not the slightest hesitation about the advisability of playing Fischer at the Olympiad. This player has good reason to be challenging for the title of world champion, and from the viewpoint of my personal prestige I was obliged to join battle.
It’s remarkable that someone who saw chess as an art form and competition as an opportunity for a kind of chivalry became world champion in the first place. To the tenth world champion, Boris Spassky, thank you for all those battles, both the beautiful games you won and those you lost.
Beautifully written, thank you!
Congrats on finding a hero to worship. Some of the play you're describing sounds to me like what Kraii would deem "fancy chess" — he typically means this pejoritavely, but then we ask ourselves the famous Shankland question: what if we do fancy chess anyways?