MOSCOW, June 13 (R-Sport) – Chess grandmaster Boris Spassky, who moved back to Russia last year after a decades-long sojourn in France, has left the French Chess Federation and will compete as a member of the Russian Chess Federation said on its website Thursday.
The move appears to be largely symbolic as Spassky, 76, has not played a match recognized by the World Chess Federation since July, 2002. His 2548 standard rating leaves him outside FIDE’s current list of top-100 players.
According to the Russian Chess Federation, Spassky emigrated from the USSR to France in 1977 but retained Soviet citizenship. He began playing under the French flag in 1984, the federation said.
Spassky, considered one of the world’s greatest chess players in the 1960s and 1970s, held the World Chess Champion title from 1969 to 1972, when he lost to the American Bobby Fischer in the so-called “Match of the Century.”
Spassky returned to Russia in August, 2012, on a temporary passport after fleeing a Paris hospital where he was being treated for a stroke. In an interview with Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Spassky claimed he had been held in captivity without access to a telephone or internet.
