Rise to the Top: 1964–1971
The decade between Bobby Fischer's emergence as the dominant force in American chess and his challenge for the World Championship was a story of extraordinary chess achievement, bitter conflict with the chess establishment, a mysterious withdrawal from competition, and one of the most devastating comeback runs in sports history.
By 1964, Fischer was arguably the strongest non-Soviet player in the world. By 1971, he had proven — in the most emphatic fashion imaginable — that he was the strongest player on earth, Soviet or otherwise.
The Perfect Score and Growing Fame
Fischer's 11–0 perfect score in the 1963/64 U.S. Championship had made him a figure beyond the chess world. A profile in Life magazine and game-by-game coverage in Sports Illustrated gave Fischer an audience that chess had never reached in America. He was young, brilliant, combative, and quotable — a made-for-media personality in a game that had traditionally operated far from the spotlight.
But Fischer's relationship with competitive chess grew increasingly fraught. He continued to win U.S. Championships — his eighth and final title came in 1966/67 — but his disputes with tournament organizers, FIDE officials, and fellow players escalated. Fischer had exacting standards for playing conditions, prize funds, and scheduling, and he was willing to withdraw from competition entirely rather than accept arrangements he considered inadequate.
The Sousse Withdrawal
The breaking point came at the 1967 Interzonal Tournament in Sousse, Tunisia. Fischer was leading the tournament with a dominant performance when a scheduling dispute erupted. Fischer wanted to skip a round for religious reasons (he was observing the Sabbath as part of his involvement with the Worldwide Church of God) and demanded that his missed game be rescheduled. When tournament officials refused, Fischer withdrew from the event entirely — forfeiting games he had already won and abandoning a commanding position in the standings.
The withdrawal was devastating. It effectively removed Fischer from the 1969 World Championship cycle and led many observers to conclude that his temperamental instability would prevent him from ever seriously challenging for the title. Soviet grandmasters, who had long viewed Fischer as their most dangerous rival, quietly celebrated.
Fischer then sat out the entire 1968–69 championship cycle. He took an eighteen-month sabbatical from competitive chess, during which he wrote My 60 Memorable Games — a book that would become one of the most influential chess works ever published. The sabbatical also coincided with his deepening involvement with Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God.
For those who followed chess closely, Fischer's absence raised an unsettling question: Was the most talented player in the world going to let his genius go to waste?
The Return
In 1970, Fischer returned to competition. His performance at the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal was a statement of intent: he scored 18½ out of 23, finishing 3½ points ahead of the field and qualifying for the 1971 Candidates matches with overwhelming authority.
Fischer had also started to take his physical conditioning seriously — an approach that was virtually unheard of among top chess players at the time. He played tennis, swam regularly, and maintained a regimen designed to keep him sharp through the grueling multi-week matches that lay ahead. In this, as in many things, he was a decade ahead of his time. Modern top players now routinely emphasize physical fitness as part of their preparation.
The Candidates cycle began, and what followed was the most dominant individual performance in the history of championship chess.
Taimanov: 6–0
In the quarterfinal match in Vancouver, Fischer faced Soviet grandmaster Mark Taimanov. What followed was a massacre. Fischer won six straight games without a single draw — a 6–0 shutout that stunned the chess world. At the highest levels of chess, shutouts in extended matches were essentially unheard of. Even weak players were expected to scrounge a few draws against strong opposition.
Taimanov was no weak player. He was a highly respected Soviet grandmaster, an accomplished concert pianist, and a veteran of international competition. The scope of his defeat was so humiliating that he faced consequences from Soviet authorities. He was reportedly interrogated about his performance, stripped of his monthly stipend, and banned from traveling abroad for a time. The Soviet chess establishment simply could not accept that one of their grandmasters had been blanked by the American.
Taimanov later described the experience as the worst defeat of his career and reflected ruefully on Fischer's relentless precision: there were no weaknesses to exploit, no moments of carelessness, no openings for counterplay.
Larsen: 6–0
In the semifinal, Fischer faced Denmark's Bent Larsen — a player who, just one year earlier, had been rated ahead of Fischer and had played first board for the Rest of the World team in the famous USSR vs. Rest of the World match (a decision that had infuriated Fischer). Larsen had also handed Fischer his only loss at the Interzonal.
The result was identical: 6–0. Another shutout against an elite opponent.
Robert Byrne, writing about the result, captured the chess world's disbelief: "To a certain extent I could grasp the Taimanov match as a kind of curiosity — almost a freak, a strange chess occurrence that would never occur again. But now I am at a loss for anything whatever to say."
Fischer's combined score of 12–0 in consecutive Candidates matches against two of the world's strongest players was without precedent. Garry Kasparov later wrote in My Great Predecessors that no player had ever demonstrated a superiority over his rivals comparable to Fischer's results in those two matches.
Petrosian: 6½–2½
The Candidates final brought Fischer against former World Champion Tigran Petrosian — perhaps the most difficult player in the world to beat. Petrosian was legendary for his defensive skills, his ability to neutralize attacking players, and his uncanny sense of danger. He had held the World Championship from 1963 to 1969 by making himself virtually impossible to defeat.
Fischer won the first game, extending his unprecedented winning streak to twenty consecutive games against elite opposition. Petrosian broke the streak by winning game two — a result that was front-page news in the chess world — but Fischer won the match convincingly, 6½–2½.
The twenty-game winning streak (counting from the Interzonal through the first game against Petrosian) remains one of the most remarkable achievements in chess history. In modern terms, it would be comparable to a tennis player winning twenty consecutive sets against top-ten opponents, or a pitcher throwing twenty consecutive shutout innings against all-star lineups. The level of sustained excellence against the strongest opposition in the world was simply without parallel.
The Challenger
Fischer had earned the right to challenge World Champion Boris Spassky. His path through the Candidates — 6–0, 6–0, 6½–2½ — represented the most dominant qualifying performance in the history of the World Championship.
His FIDE rating had climbed to 2785, the highest in the world by 125 points over Spassky's 2660. The gap between Fischer and the rest of the chess world was the widest ever recorded between a top player and his nearest rival.
The chess world braced for the most anticipated match in the game's history. The question was no longer whether Fischer was good enough to become World Champion. It was whether anything — Spassky's experience, the hostile Soviet chess establishment, or Fischer's own volatile temperament — could prevent it.