Anyone old enough to remember...

It was highly publicized, and was a major event. I don't think the games aired in bars, but I watched some of it at home. It's doubtful that a whole lot of people watched them all, as a few games went on for several hours, and the whole match lasted something like two months. When Fischer returned to the U.S., he was given a hero's welcome, and even appeared on a television comedy sketch with Bob Hope.

The "They'll Do It Every Time" comic strip featured the chess craze once, showing two workers playing chess on the sidewalk with passersby making comments such as "it's not like checkers."

It wasn't exaggerated at all. It was everywhere. The Soviets had completely dominated chess for decades, and had held the world championship for the entire Cold War. The fact that an American was challenging this - and was fully expected to win - made this an extremely popular event, and the country was truly gripped by chess fever.

To create drama, they tried to make it look like Spassky was this unstoppable giant and that Bobby was kind of lucky to be there. What they didn't show was Bobby dominating the Interzonals and then winning the Candidates Tournament, the "playoffs" to select the next challenger to the world champion, by an astounding and previously unimaginable score of 6-0 and 6-0 in the first 2 rounds and then defeating the previous world champion, Tigran Petrosian, 6-1/2 - 2-1/2 in the finals. Bobby was winless against Spassky going into the championship match, but he was not an underdog.

I vaguely remember watching at least one of the games on TV as a kid. It seemed to me that something very important was going down. As SuperCatMonkey rightfully states, Fischer was expected to defeat Spassky, as long as he himself didn't self-destruct. Bobby was his own worst enemy, a product of his encroaching mental illness. That is something the movie doesn't exaggerate. But Fischer was at the height of his chess powers going into the championship match, a juggernaut. It would be many years before anyone would challenge the claim that Fischer was the greatest chess player of all time. Some argue he still is.

I am old enough and I was glued to, well, the newspapers at the time because the only mention of the match on television was on the national news, though The Wide World of Sports gave it an occasional blurb.

It was not televised in the United States and most Americans could have cared less. 1972 was NOT the information age and one relied on the generosity of newspapers to get the game - and that always the next day and with very little commentary.

Of course and since we all love a winner, after Fischer beat Spassky he had a guest appearance on a Bob Hope special and endorsements that could have set him up for life.

It was shown on PBS via a relay system. Shelby Lyman would move the pieces on a demonstration board and talk with various chess experts, analysts,etc, all the time on live tv, including Edmar Mendis ("Hello ? Edmar? )over the phone from Iceland.

I watched almost all of the games. It was a brilliant tour de force by Lyman

I don't remember watching it on tv, but I do remember seeing the report of the previous day's game in the newspaper every day (on the front page.) Me and my brothers would replay each game and discuss what was going on (of course, we had no talent so we didn't have a clue about the deep strategy going on.)

So yeah; it was huge.

It was huge event even in Soviet Union. I was 13 y.o. then and we didnt have TV in our house, so I read results and game notations with grandmaster comments next day from newspaper.

We replayed games on chessboard with other boys and tried to find better moves which would save the game or win it.

It was probably most famous chess match of all times until Kasparov - Karpov matches came 12 years later.