A grandmaster who learned to play chess in the Kirov region has passed away.

      Boris Spassky, the world chess champion, passed away at the age of 89, Kommersant reports. The king of chess declared himself in 1955, when he won the World Youth Championship. In 1966, he won the right to a World Championship match against Tigran Petrosyan, but was defeated. Three years later, Spassky won the chess crown. In 1972, he lost a match to Robert Fischer. Four years later, in 1976, he emigrated to France and returned to Russia in 2012. Boris Spassky continued to perform at the highest level until the end of the 1980s.

      An interesting fact is that Boris Spassky learned the game of chess in the Kirov region. After the outbreak of World War II, shortly before the siege of Leningrad began, Boris and his brother were evacuated to the village of Korshik in the Orichevsky district. Boris and his brother were heading to the Kirov region in the second echelon, which, unlike the first and third, did not come under Nazi bombing. The brothers reached our region and ended up in an orphanage. It was in Korshik that Boris learned to play chess at the age of five.