Fischer's Candidates Matches
Bobby Fischer participated in two Candidates cycles during his career. The first, in 1959, was a learning experience. The second, in 1971, was one of the most devastating individual performances in the history of competitive sport.
1959 Candidates Tournament — The Education
Fischer's first Candidates Tournament took place in Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in the fall of 1959. He was sixteen years old — easily the youngest player in a field that included Mikhail Tal, Vasily Smyslov, Paul Keres, Tigran Petrosian, and other Soviet elite.
Fischer finished in a tie for fifth through sixth place with 12½ out of 28 — a respectable result for a teenager but far from contention for the world title. Tal won the tournament dominantly and went on to defeat Botvinnik for the World Championship the following year.
The experience was invaluable. Fischer saw firsthand how the Soviet players operated at the highest level — their depth of preparation, their psychological toughness, and, as he came to believe, their willingness to collude against non-Soviet opponents. The lessons he took from the 1959 Candidates informed everything that followed.
1971 Candidates Matches — The Demolition
The 1971 Candidates cycle was the one that shook the chess world to its foundations. FIDE had changed the format from a round-robin tournament to a series of individual knockout matches — a reform partly inspired by Fischer's own complaints about collusion in the old format. The new structure played perfectly to Fischer's strengths as a match player.
Quarterfinal: Fischer 6–0 Taimanov
Fischer's first opponent was Mark Taimanov, a Soviet grandmaster and accomplished concert pianist. The match took place in Vancouver, Canada, in May–June 1971.
The result was a massacre: Fischer won all six games without conceding a single draw. A 6–0 shutout in a Candidates match between top grandmasters was virtually unheard of. Even weak players were expected to scrape together at least a few draws against strong opposition over the course of six or more games.
Taimanov was no weak player — he was a seasoned Soviet grandmaster ranked in the world's top twenty. The completeness of his defeat was so humiliating that Soviet authorities reportedly interrogated him about his performance, stripped his stipend, and restricted his travel abroad.
Fischer's play was characterized by relentless accuracy. There were no wild gambits, no speculative attacks. He simply outplayed Taimanov in every phase of every game — in the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame — with a level of consistency that left no room for hope.
Semifinal: Fischer 6–0 Larsen
Fischer's semifinal opponent was Bent Larsen of Denmark — one of the strongest non-Soviet players in the world and the only player who had beaten Fischer at the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal. Just one year earlier, Larsen 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.
The result was identical: 6–0. Another complete shutout.
The back-to-back 6–0 results — twelve consecutive wins against two of the world's best players — were without precedent in the history of the World Championship cycle. Robert Byrne captured the chess world's disbelief: "I could grasp the Taimanov match as a kind of curiosity — almost a freak. But now I am at a loss for anything whatever to say."
Final: Fischer 6½–2½ Petrosian
The Candidates final brought Fischer against former World Champion Tigran Petrosian — perhaps the most difficult opponent imaginable. Petrosian was legendary for his defensive genius, his ability to neutralize attacking players, and his uncanny sense of danger. He had held the World Championship for six years by making himself almost impossible to beat.
Fischer won the first game, extending his winning streak to an unprecedented twenty consecutive games against elite opposition. Petrosian stopped the streak by winning Game 2 — a result that was front-page news in the chess world. But Fischer won the match convincingly, 6½–2½, taking four games and drawing five.
The Twenty-Game Streak
Fischer's winning streak across the Interzonal and Candidates — seven straight wins to close Palma de Mallorca, six against Taimanov, six against Larsen, and one against Petrosian — totaled twenty consecutive victories against world-class competition. It remains one of the most remarkable achievements in chess history.
As Garry Kasparov later wrote in My Great Predecessors, no player before or since has demonstrated such overwhelming superiority over the world's best players in a comparable stretch of games.
The Challenger
Fischer emerged from the 1971 Candidates with an Elo rating of 2785 — the highest in the world by a margin of 125 points over Boris Spassky's 2660. The gap between Fischer and the rest of the chess world was the widest ever recorded.
He had earned the right to challenge for the World Championship through the most dominant qualifying performance in history. The path ahead led to Reykjavík.