Match of the Century is the second game in recent memory to figure chess as its topic without simply being chess. The first was The Queen’s Gambit: The Board Game, a title I didn’t play but which seemed to draw mostly groans. Match of the Century was designed by Paolo Mori, and because Mori is one of the most assured designers working today, it is decidedly not groan-worthy.

That doesn’t mean it fits Mori’s register. This is his most overtly historical game, tackling the 1972 World Chess Championship match between Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky and challenger Bobby Fischer. But while it’s a compelling ditty in its own right, it didn’t leave me any surer of the dynamics of that landmark tournament.

Determining the proper timing for each card.

Imagine how difficult it would be to capture the importance of a chess tournament. Not just any chess tournament, but the most covered chess tournament of all time. The Cold War was in full swing in 1972, and the Soviets had engineered a supremacy for chess unlike anything the world had seen before or since. Their dominance was won not only through raw mastery but also through match fixing, bribery, state-sponsored rewards and punishments, and the careful jiggering of tournament brackets. Is there any better determiner of whether something qualifies as a “sport” than how willing people are to cheat at it?

There are any number of ways Mori could have tackled such a topic. Perhaps players would have adopted the roles of Spassky and Fischer as they tried to qualify for the tournament, navigating competing global interests and negotiating with sponsors. Famously, Fischer’s prima-donna attitude very nearly led him to skip out on the match altogether; a call from Henry Kissinger helped hustle him onto the airplane. Or perhaps there would be a chilly air to the whole thing, with Spassky’s KGB handler delivering veiled warnings about his comfortable life back in Moscow. The framing of the championship always renders Fischer as the protagonist, but it’s the much-harangued Spassky one could see themselves sharing a drink with.

Instead of adopting a wide-angle lens, Mori zooms in on the tournament itself. The match was dominated by its personalities, mostly Fischer, with his repeated insistences on changed venues, diminished audience seating, and cameras being switched off because his precious ears were ringing from a whirring that no decibel meter could detect. These tournaments were televised nervous breakdowns. To wit, Mori puts the focus on the tattered mental fortitude of its masters.

Pawns add strength to their side of an exchange.

Set over the course of up to eleven individual matches, there are two tracks players must keep in mind at all times. The more obvious of the two is for counting wins. A single game in Match of the Century is a brisk thing, over in anywhere from five minutes to a literal handful of seconds, and whichever player first achieves six wins takes the tournament. Because this is chess, draws move both players forward. This can absolutely result in both players “winning” at the same time, although this defaults to a Spassky victory. He’s the reigning champion, after all.

But it’s the second track that’s more interesting. Both players are also required to measure their mental fortitude. This determines a few things. How many cards they hold in hand. How many pawns they earn. If they reach their tracks’ poles, whether they begin any given game with a slight advantage or disadvantage. Put together, these determined the setup for each game, and situate players in tougher positions when they fail to tend to their mental health. Or when it’s sabotaged.

I’ll give an example. This is a lane battler, following in the footsteps of Reiner Knizia’s Battle Line and its many offspring. Every game consists of up to four “exchanges,” in which both players use a single card to determine their strength on one of the board’s four lanes. These lanes differ in value, generating a minor tussle for dominance over that particular game. Every card has a strength rating, plus pawns can be deployed to tweak your strength upward a bit. It’s naturally better to win in the higher-rated lanes, swinging the advantage in your favor, but that isn’t always the case. And it has everything to do with the cards.

The cards, you see, are perhaps your toughest foe of all. Okay, that’s a lie: your toughest foe is either your fading mental fortitude or the actual foe sitting across from you, but let’s still not undersell just how crucial your cards can be. That’s because every card shows two different chess pieces. Depending on which color you’re playing at the moment, you’ll flip your hand to show either white or black. Your goal is to win the higher value, except every card also shows an ability — and these only trigger for the player who doesn’t win on strength.

This transforms Match of the Century into a Matryoshka doll of nested tug-of-wars. Individual exchanges must be won to win games, but can also be lost to gain more long-term advantages. When playing as Spassky, for example, you might deliberately lose with your queen. A queen has the highest strength rating in the game, but losing with her means gaining two spaces on the mental fortitude track and driving down Fischer one — a significant swing. This type of sacrifice is found throughout the design. Resigning a game early hands the victory to your opposition, bringing them one step closer to winning the overall tournament, but also lends you some vital time off to recoup your mental health. Or you could show up late to the chessboard to irk Spassky. The Fischer Gambit.

Getting stressed.

When these nested competitions come together, Match of the Century telescopes outward. It’s about weighing the moment against the long-term, capturing the tidal forces of give and take that dominate any tournament sport. Its closest comparison, genre-wise, is Jon Perry’s supernal Air, Land, & Sea, another lane battler that asks players to make smart wins and even smarter losses.

But where Air, Land, & Sea allows players to fully embrace defeat as an avenue to eventual victory, the tournament structure highlighted in Match of the Century can only bear so many retreats. This is a game of constraints. Cede too many exchanges and you’ll lose a game; forfeit too many games and you’ll lose the tournament. Every play must be carefully rationed. Even when playing cards for their off-color, which relegates them to pawns with only the flimsiest of abilities, one must be cautious to save up any pieces that will be useful in the upcoming session, when you’ll switch to the current match’s off-color.

The result is exacting. Small missteps can have big consequences. Even winning can take a toll, as when you conquer the highest-value lane on the board and find yourself paying in mental fortitude. Mori’s talent for drawing player attention inward is on full display. Does it evoke chess? Not as such. But the pressures of a tournament against an opponent who’s studied your every move? Absolutely.

At the same time, Match of the Century lacks the high ceiling of some of its peers. It doesn’t have the drafting of Omen: A Reign of War, the area control of Haven, the gambling sensibilities of AL&S, or even the finely-tuned interrelated triggers of The Old King’s Crown. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed exploring all it has to offer. But there isn’t as much to plumb as some of its competition. Nor is it as compulsively playable as some of Mori’s other titles. Blitzkrieg! and Caesar!, for example, both showcase Mori’s two-player chops at their best. By comparison, Match of the Century is tighter but not as worthy of repeat examination.

Fischer looks so happy.

Even so, Match of the Century is a rare and strange creature. It’s elegant and evocative, cutting to the heart of what makes a multi-session game so enthralling. Spassky and Fischer come through only dimly; the same goes for the Cold War backdrop. The real emphasis is on each player’s stamina, their ability to recover from an error, their willingness to be a bit of a punk in order to win. It may be minor Mori, but even that is a fine thing to see in action.

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A complimentary copy was provided.