The Blue Bird

Spassky's win over Bronstein in the 1960 Soviet Championship is remembered today as much for its afterlife as for the moves themselves: the game was later staged, with a straight face, as a demonstration of chess mastery in the 1963 Bond film From Russia with Love. On the board it is a King's Gambit, an opening even top players were starting to treat as slightly old fashioned by 1960, handled by Spassky with a directness that makes the outcome look almost inevitable in hindsight.

The critical moment is 15.Nd6!?, a knight sacrifice that ignored Black's own dangerous looking passed pawn on e2 in favour of ripping open the position around Bronstein's king. Spassky judged that his attack would arrive before Bronstein's pawn could promote and cause any real trouble, and he was right: by move 21 Bronstein's king had no safe square, and 23.Qe4+ forced immediate resignation, with no way to stop the mate that follows.

The game appears in Bronstein's own book of two hundred open games under the title The Blue Bird, a sign that even the loser recognised its quality. It remains one of the most frequently replayed King's Gambits of the modern era, cited both for the soundness of Spassky's calculation and for the rare distinction of a serious tournament game becoming a piece of popular culture.