An arbiter named Božidar Kažič once flew to America on a single errand: talk Bobby Fischer back to the chessboard. Fischer had walked out of the 1967 Sousse Interzonal while leading, and the world had barely seen him since. Kažič's closing argument passed into chess folklore. "Think about it," he said. "If you don't play in the Match of the Century, it will simply be the greatest chess absurdity of the century!" Fischer played.
The match was the idea of Max Euwe, FIDE president and former world champion. Since joining the Olympiad in 1952, the Soviet Union had won every one, and its players had held the world title without a break since 1948. Euwe proposed the unthinkable: gather the strongest non-Soviet players on Earth and field them as a single team. In 1970, the Soviet federation agreed. From 29 March to 5 April, in the House of Trade Unions in Belgrade, ten Soviets and ten players from the rest of the world sat down for four rounds — forty games in all — before 2,000 spectators and 63 foreign correspondents, with hundreds more following the moves on screens outside the hall.
A team of champions
The Soviet squad looked less like a team than a hall of fame: reigning world champion Boris Spassky; former champions Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian; then Viktor Korchnoi, Lev Polugaevsky, Efim Geller, Mark Taimanov and Paul Keres. Opposite them, captained by Euwe himself, stood Bent Larsen, Bobby Fischer, Lajos Portisch, Vlastimil Hort, Svetozar Gligorić, Samuel Reshevsky, Wolfgang Uhlmann, Milan Matulović, Miguel Najdorf and Borislav Ivkov.
Board one was settled before a move was played. Euwe had used the new Elo ratings to set the order, which put Fischer on top — until Larsen refused to give way. His record was real: eight straight tournament victories, including a win at Winnipeg ahead of Spassky himself. In desperation the organizers asked Petrosian to persuade him. The former champion's attempt was a shrug. "I like you," he told Larsen. "Let's play." Fischer surprised everyone and conceded. He took board two against Petrosian; Larsen got the world champion.
Half a point
At the top, the World team shone. Larsen beat Spassky 2½–1½, and Fischer dismantled Petrosian 3–1, his first-round win judged the best game of the round. But the Soviet middle and lower boards were relentless: the USSR took rounds one and two 5½–4½ and 6–4. The World team struck back in round three, winning 6–4, and reached the last day a single point behind.
Everything hinged on the final round. Lajos Portisch reached a winning position against Korchnoi — then allowed a draw by threefold repetition. A full point there would have tied the match. Samuel Reshevsky could not play his final game because the round fell on the Jewish Sabbath, and his substitute, Friðrik Ólafsson of Iceland, lost to Smyslov — a game Smyslov later ranked among the most memorable of his career. Spassky, unwell, was replaced on board one by Leonid Stein, who also lost. When the last game ended, the scoreboard read USSR 20½–19½. The machine had held by the slimmest margin a team match allows.
Even the winners were unsettled. "We won," Tal wrote in the Soviet magazine 64, "but there are some reasons for concern: why are the foreign players making faster progress — at least in outward appearance?" A rematch in London in 1984 proved his point: the USSR held on again, 21–19.
And Belgrade was a beginning as much as an ending. Fischer, who made the best result on the World team, won a car for the trouble — then won the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal, swept candidates' matches against Taimanov and Larsen 6–0, and took the world title from Spassky in Reykjavík in 1972. Kažič got his wish. The century got its match. And chess got its champion back.