chess tweet – Chessdom https://www.chessdom.com Chess, chess news, live chess games Sun, 27 Apr 2025 20:28:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 Bobby Fischer’s unparalleled achievement https://www.chessdom.com/bobby-fischers-unparalleled-achievement/ Sun, 27 Apr 2025 20:27:14 +0000 https://www.chessdom.com/?p=98843 Bobby Fischer was an enigmatic chess prodigy and a towering legend in the game’s history for his brilliance and unrelenting drive. He brought many innovations to the game of chess, and one of them was a substantial increase in money paid to chess players.

Thanks to the Historical Currency Convertor and The Big Book Of World Chess Championships by Andre Schulz, we find a realistic historical comparison in prize funds of World Championships, converted to today’s money value. HT: Anish Giri

Absolute leader is Garry Kasparov, with the top prize fund figure being the Kasparov – Karpov World Chess Championship of 1990 with 5,7 million USD. Kasparov holds the second and third positions as well. Kasparov – Short from 1993 stands at 4,7 million USD, while his 1987 World Chess Championship match with Karpov stands at 3,5 million USD.

However, the real unparalleled achievement on this list is the one of Bobby Fischer. His match with Spassky from 1972 achieved a whole order of magnitude increase to prize funds. Until then money for matches were maximum in the hundreds of thousands, while he brought the figure above 1 million USD (1,6 million, to be precise). To achieve the same success, someone has to bring the prize funds for World Championships from millions to tens of millions USD.

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