With Fischer out of the picture, Karpov and GM Viktor Korchnoi dueled ferociously throughout the 1970s for supremacy, a rivalry that grew even more heated when Korchnoi defected to the West in 1976.

When it came to the next world championship in 1978, between Korchnoi and Karpov, the Soviets had learned that a chess match must be won off the board as well as on it. To that end, they employed ...

Soviet chess grandmaster Boris Spassky, who was famously defeated in the so-called match of the century at the height of the Cold War, has died aged 88, the Chess Federation of Russia said ...