The would have been great match that never took place

Magic of ’72 match hasn’t been repeated and likely won’t be
Saturday, March 15, 2008 3:02 AM
By SHELBY LYMAN

The 1972 match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky was a classic chess struggle.

The better player won. It wasn’t easy, but Fischer prevailed.

The American public was enthralled by the five-hour battles that unfolded on their television screens via PBS.

Yes, the chess was wonderful, but, most of all, the handsome, unimaginably stubborn and independent, rough-hewn youth from New York dominated the collective consciousness.

His personality transcended national borders. Grandmaster Gregory Kaidanov, who eventually settled in the United States, recalls: “I felt (as a kid in the Soviet Union) that by choosing Fischer as my chess hero, I was rebelling against surrounding reality.”

But the American never played a serious match again, and the momentum was lost. There was nothing to replace Fischer and Spassky — nothing equivalent to duplicate the magical moment of 1972.

If it were presented on television, the 1997 Kasparov-Deep Blue match — man vs. machine — might have been another chess Super Bowl, albeit of a different kind. But IBM, perhaps fearful that its protege would lose, had little interest in such coverage. A unique historic moment was lost to most of the public.

Source: The Columbus Dispatch

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