Time & Perspective Quote by Boris Spassky

Spassky is doing something rare in sports talk: admitting that the game’s biggest stage is being shaped less by excellence than by event economics. Calling chess a “mass sport” isn’t a celebration so much as a warning label. It signals a shift from the insulated, priestly culture of elite chess to a product competing for attention like everything else. Shorter time controls are “obviously more attractive” to organizers because they’re cleaner to package: predictable runtimes, more decisive results, more drama per minute, better for sponsors and broadcasts. The word “obviously” carries a dry, almost resigned bite: we all know why this is happening, so let’s not pretend it’s purely about the purity of competition.

Then he draws the line at the World Championship, the last place where chess still claims to be about depth rather than spectacle. The subtext is that speed changes what mastery looks like. Under rapid or blitz conditions, the champion is not only the best thinker but the best manager of nerves, reflexes, and error-control under stress. That’s legitimate skill, but it’s a different sport than the one that historically crowned “world champions” as the deepest analysts of positions.

Spassky’s own context matters: a Cold War-era champion from the long-game tradition, when matches were marathons and preparation was ideology. His complaint isn’t nostalgia for slow clocks; it’s a defense of the title’s meaning. If the World Championship starts optimizing for “attractive,” he’s implying, it risks becoming just another tournament with better branding.