The latest of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. This profile will be published in three parts over the next month, building to a comprehensive overview of the life and career of the 10th world champion. The first part assesses Spassky’s meteoric rise in the post-war Soviet Union

Part 1: The young attacking genius

“Boris Spassky has had a curiously uneven chess career for a world title-holder,” said Leonard Barden in the foreword to Bernard Cafferty’s 1972 book Spassky’s 100 Best Games. “Teenage prodigy, junior world champion and the youngest ever qualifier for an interzonal at 18 (Fischer later lowered the record), Spassky was already the crown prince of international chess before he was 20. Then came years of disappointments, quarrels with his trainer and chess officials, and divorce before a second surge carried Boris to the summit in 1969.”

When Spassky was playing his first world championship match against Tigran Petrosian in 1966, my best friend at school and I decided to play our own match concurrently. We played on a travelling set on our daily train journeys; I wanted the Spassky role and he preferred to be Petrosian. Unlike the real match, “Spassky” defeated “Petrosian” in our contest.

I think one of my reasons for liking Spassky was his advocacy of the Kings Gambit. My first game with it was in a Glasgow Schools Congress. I was losing at move five, winning at move 11, but lost in 23. In contrast, Spassky’s record in the gambit was remarkable, playing 30 games without loss at the top level, defeating Fischer, Karpov, Portisch and Bronstein amongst others. This Bronstein game was used in the Bond film From Russia with Love:

Boris Vasilievich Spassky was born on 30 January 1937 in Leningrad, from whence the family were evacuated after the German invasion. He learned chess at the age of five while billeted in a house with older children. Returning to Leningrad after the war, Boris began to visit a summer chess pavilion, at first watching as a spectator before playing. He recalled that there was little food at that time and he would spend all day there, being devastated when it closed in September.

The following year he joined the Palace of Pioneers, where he met met his first chess trainer Vladimir Zak. Genna Sosonko tells how Spassky credited Zak not only with teaching him the King’s Gambit and introducing him to opera and the works of Mark Twain, but also arranging financial support for his family. At the age of 10, he defeated Mikhail Botvinnik in a simultaneous. In discussing his style, Garry Kasparov suggests that Spassky liked a strong, mobile centre and free development, with Zak cultivating his attacking prowess. I think this game – played by 12-year-old Boris – is a good example.

In 1951 Spassky changed his trainer, replacing the able pedogogue Zak with the attacking genius Alexander Tolush. They had first met in 1947 in the Palace of Pioneers when young Boris, given the responsibility of transmitting the moves in a telegraph match, was also given the honour of going to the buffet to buy Tolush more cigarettes. Valentina, Tolush’s wife, recalled that having no children of their own, they regarded Borya as their son.

Viktor Korchnoi, who had turned down Tolush as a trainer in 1950, testified that he soon noticed a dramatic improvement in Spassky’s play as he fought for the initiative in the style of Tolush. Spassky continued to improve in subsequent years, coming second to Mark Taimanov in the 1952 Leningrad Championship and receiving praise from Botvinnik. Before he had even played in a USSR Championship semi-final he was selected to play in the strong 1953 Bucharest international, where he played Vasily Smyslov in the first round.

This was Smyslov’s only loss in a tournament. “Smyslov didn’t talk to me for the rest of the tournament,” said Spassky. At a later date Spassky told how instructions had been received from Moscow, after the Hungarian player Laszlo Szabo had taken the lead, for the Soviet players to draw their remaining games with each other, so Spassky drew with Tolush, Petrosian and Isaac Boleslavsky. He now qualified as an international master.

1955 was a good year for Spassky – celebrating his 18th birthday during his first appearance in the USSR Championship Final, becoming world junior champion and qualifying for the Gothenburg Interzonal. This game was played in round 6 of that USSR final, where he finished equal third behind Smyslov and Efim Geller.

Spassky narrowly qualified from the Interzonal for the 1956 Candidates Tournament, becoming the youngest to earn the grandmaster title at 18. He was now appearing in the Soviet press, recognised for chess while also studying journalism at Leningrad University and achieving sporting success in the high jump with a leap of 1.80 metres.

Everything seemed to going well for Boris at this time, but there was a serious threat to his future progress. The interpreter for the Sports Committee reported Spassky for his inappropriate remarks and questions during his foreign travels. Fortunately an official in the committee, Dmitri Postnikov, decided to give him a terrible scolding but did not take the matter further. “Postnikov was my guardian angel”, said Spassky.

In 1956 Spassky shared first place in the USSR Championship, finishing a point ahead of another rising star, Mikhail Tal, but losing the subsequent first place play-off to Taimanov. On the journey to the Amsterdam Candidates, the Soviet delegation stopped over in Paris to attend the opening of a monument to the first Russian world champion Alexander Alekhine, at Montparnasse cemetery. Alekhine was always one of Spassky’s favourite players.

In Amsterdam Smyslov won the event, losing only to Spassky, who finished joint third with four other players, including Bronstein, Geller, Petrosian and Szabo. The main “prize” for him was the granting of a two-room apartment for him, his mother and two siblings, double the size of his previous one. Tal won the 1957 USSR championship, with Spassky fourth equal. Here is a celebrated game from that tournament.

Later that year Spassky led the Soviet team to victory in the World Students’ Olympiad, where they won every match, and finished first in his USSR Championship semi-final. Spassky now looked forward hopefully to the final in Riga, which would also be a zonal for the world championship, with four places at stake. At the age of 20, the chess world was at his feet.

Alan Scrimgour, Kingston club chair

* Part 2 will follow Spassky as he establishes himself as a leading contender for the world championship title. Part 3 will see him rise to the summit as 10th world champion, only to lose his title to Bobby Fischer in the “Match of the Century” in Reykjavik in 1972 – and with it his status as the golden boy of Soviet chess.