Reykjavík 1972

Reykjavík 1972 refers to the World Championship match between American challenger Bobby Fischer and Soviet champion Boris Spassky. A match is a series of games between the same two players, not a single game. It took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, during the Cold War, a period of intense political and strategic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and attracted extraordinary attention far beyond the usual chess audience.

Fischer won 12.5 to 8.5 after 21 games and became the eleventh world champion. The contest was widely nicknamed the “Match of the Century” and helped bring chess to a much larger international audience.

The name is easily confused with the Game of the Century. That was a single 1956 game between Donald Byrne and thirteen-year-old Fischer. Reykjavík 1972, by contrast, means the entire Fischer-Spassky World Championship match.