Belgrade 1970: The Match of the Century
In the spring of 1970, the chess world gathered in Belgrade for an event without precedent: the Soviet Union, which had monopolised the world title since 1948, against a ten-board team drawn from the rest of the planet. The Soviet side read like a roll call of famous chess players: Boris Spassky, Tigran Petrosian, Viktor Korchnoi, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal. The challengers had their own drama before a pawn was pushed. Bobby Fischer, the obvious choice for top board, agreed to step down to board two so that the Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen, whose recent tournament record was formidable, could face the World Champion himself. Larsen had earned the honour: he had won a string of elite events in the late 1960s and feared nobody. In round two of that match he sat down with the white pieces against Spassky, played his trademark 1.b3, and walked into seventeen moves that are still replayed more than half a century later. The match itself finished 20.5 to 19.5 to the USSR, but this game is what Belgrade 1970 is remembered for.
Larsen's Opening Meets a Champion's Centre
The game began 1.b3 e5 2.Bb2 Nc6 3.c4 Nf6 4.Nf3 e4 5.Nd4 Bc5 6.Nxc6 dxc6 7.e3 Bf5 8.Qc2 Qe7 9.Be2 O-O-O. Larsen's flank opening, fianchettoing the bishop to b2 and conceding the centre, was a deliberate provocation, and Spassky answered it in the classical spirit: occupy the centre, gain time, develop with threats. By move nine, Black had castled long, his pieces pointed at the white kingside, and the half-open d-file belonged to his rook. White, by contrast, had moved his queen's knight nowhere and his king still stood on e1. Nothing was yet lost for Larsen, but the position demanded modesty. Instead came 10.f4, an ambitious lunge that Spassky met with 10...Ng4, and the punishment began. The sequence is a textbook lesson in chess strategy: when your opponent owns the centre and leads in development, opening lines around your own king is an invitation to disaster. Spassky needed no second invitation.
The Storm Gathers: Moves 10 to 13
After 10.f4 Ng4 11.g3 h5, the shape of the attack was already visible. The h-pawn would run down the board, prise open the file, and Black's heavy pieces would pour through. Larsen tried 12.h3, asking the knight on g4 a question, and Spassky gave the answer that made the game immortal: 12...h4, ignoring the attacked knight entirely. After 13.hxg4 hxg3, the true accounting became clear. Black was a piece down, but the pawn on g3 was a monster: it threatened to march to g2 and g1, and the open h-file belonged to the black rook. Larsen found 14.Rg1, sidestepping the file and guarding against the pawn's advance, since after an immediate push the rook could deal with it. The position now called for something beyond ordinary calculation. Students of chess tactics know the deflection theme, the forcible dragging of a defender away from its duty. What Spassky produced is the purest example of it ever played at the highest level.
14...Rh1: The Deflection
Spassky placed his rook on h1, en prise to the rook on g1, attacking nothing, defended by nothing. The move looks at first like a misprint. Its logic is iron. The rook on g1 was the only white piece restraining the g3 pawn, and 14...Rh1 forced it to declare itself. Declining was impossible, since the rook on h1 itself supports the pawn's promotion. So Larsen took: 15.Rxh1. Now came the point, 15...g2, attacking the rook on h1 and threatening to promote. The rook had nowhere safe. On 16.Rg1 Spassky intended 16...Qh4+ 17.Kd1 Qh1, when the pin decides, so Larsen tried 16.Rf1. There followed 16...Qh4+ 17.Kd1 gxf1=Q+, the pawn taking the rook and becoming a queen with check. After the forced 18.Bxf1, Black has 18...Bxg4+ winning yet more material against a naked king, and Larsen resigned without playing on. A rook had been sacrificed so that a pawn could travel two squares. Among famous chess games, very few turn on an idea so simple and so deep.
Aftermath: Seventeen Moves on Board One
The resignation after move 17 made this the shortest decisive game ever played between two players of such standing in so prominent an event. Larsen, never a man short of confidence, had insisted on facing the World Champion and had been dismantled in under an hour. Spassky, then a year into his reign after defeating Petrosian in 1969, had produced the kind of game that defines a champion in the public imagination, the way certain games at the World Chess Championships define entire eras. The result also carried symbolic weight within the match: the Soviet team won by the narrowest possible margin, 20.5 to 19.5, and Spassky's miniature was the jewel of their scoreline. For Larsen the defeat stung but did not break him; he won the 1970 Interzonal the same year. For 1.b3, the damage was more lasting. The opening still bears Larsen's name, and it remains sound, but every player who essays it knows the game that haunts it.
Legacy: The Textbook Deflection
14...Rh1 entered the canon of chess history almost immediately and has never left it. It appears in virtually every tactics manual as the defining illustration of deflection, and the supporting ideas, the pawn storm with 12...h4, the willingness to remain a piece down for the initiative, the conversion through promotion rather than mate, make the game a complete course in attacking play, with the final phase a reminder that even chess endgames themes like the passed pawn can decide a middlegame. The game is also a monument to Spassky's universal style: he was equally at home in quiet positional channels and in violence like this, which is why contemporaries considered him the hardest champion to prepare against. Played out on standard tournament pieces of the Staunton chess set pattern, the position after 14...Rh1 has been set up on demonstration boards, club tables and kitchen tables ever since. More than fifty years on, the move still produces the same reaction it drew in Belgrade: a moment of disbelief, then understanding, then admiration.
Jaques of London — Making Chess Sets Since 1849
By 1970, FIDE regulations mandated the Staunton pattern for tournament play, the design originally created by Jaques of London in 1849 and named for Howard Staunton. The pieces Spassky and Larsen handled in Belgrade trace their design directly to the Jaques of London workshop, where the pattern that became the world standard was first turned more than a century before this game was played.
Shop Staunton Chess Sets →Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why did Spassky play 14...Rh1 against Larsen?
The move is a pure deflection sacrifice. After 13...hxg3, Spassky had a passed pawn one square from promotion, but Larsen's rook on g1 guarded the promotion square via f1 and could blockade on g1 itself. By playing 14...Rh1, Spassky forced that rook to make a choice: capture the intruder or abandon the first rank. After 15.Rxh1 the rook had been dragged to a square where it no longer controlled the pawn's path, and 15...g2 attacked it while threatening to promote. The rook had no good square: 16.Rg1 loses to 16...Qh4+ 17.Kd1 Qh1, and the game's 16.Rf1 allowed 16...Qh4+ 17.Kd1 gxf1=Q+, winning a whole rook with the queens still raking the board. One rook was given up so a single pawn could decide the game.
Q: What opening did Larsen play in this game?
Larsen opened with 1.b3, the flank system now known as the Nimzo-Larsen Attack, which he had used as a personal weapon against the world's elite throughout the late 1960s. The idea is to fianchetto the queen's bishop on b2 and pressure the centre from the wing rather than occupy it. Spassky responded in the most principled way, seizing the centre with 1...e5 and 2...Nc6, gaining time with 4...e4, and exchanging on c6 to open the d-file. The opening itself was playable for White; the real damage came later, when 10.f4 and 12.h3 fatally loosened the white kingside while the king still sat in the middle. After this defeat the line lost some of its sting at the very top level, though it remains respected today.
Q: Why did Larsen resign after only 17 moves?
After 16...Qh4+ 17.Kd1 gxf1=Q+, White's position was beyond repair. The pawn had promoted with check, so Larsen had to capture the new queen with 18.Bxf1, and then 18...Bxg4+ comes with another check, winning further material and leaving the white king hopelessly exposed in the centre with most of his army still on its starting squares. Material loss was already decisive and every black piece was joining the attack. Resignation after 17 moves was simply the honest acknowledgment of a lost position. For a player of Larsen's rank, then arguably the strongest Western player alongside Bobby Fischer, defeat in a miniature on board one of the most publicised match in chess history was a famous humiliation, but playing on would only have prolonged it.
Q: What was the USSR vs Rest of the World match in 1970?
The 1970 match in Belgrade, widely billed as the Match of the Century, pitted a ten-board Soviet team against a team drawn from the rest of the world over four rounds. The Soviet Union had dominated world chess since the Second World War, holding the world title continuously from 1948, so the event was a direct test of that supremacy. The Soviet team included Spassky, Petrosian, Korchnoi, Smyslov and Tal. The Rest of the World fielded Larsen on board one and Bobby Fischer on board two, after Fischer unexpectedly agreed to cede top board to Larsen. The USSR won narrowly, 20.5 to 19.5, a far closer margin than expected, and the event is remembered both for that scoreline and for Spassky's 17-move demolition of Larsen.