Fridrik Olafsson, a grand master of chess who helped make his native Iceland a bastion of the game, in part by beating four world champions, including Bobby Fischer, the dominant American player, died on Friday in Reykjavík, the country’s capital. He was 90 years old.
Death, in a hospital, was announcement By the International Federation of Chess, the Director of the Game. He was the president of the organization from 1978 to 1982, when he was known as the Global Federation of Chess.
The ascent of Mr. Olafsson to the peaks of the failures was unexpected; Iceland was not known as a chess power at the time. But in the 1980s, largely because of his example, he had more great masters per capita than any other country.
Almost entirely self -taught, Mr. Olafsson learned the game while watching his father play.
One day, when he was 7 or 8 years old, he studied his father’s movements carefully on the champion in a friendly match against a parent, recalled Mr. Olafsson in an interview for this NECRology in 2014. “I remember saying that he was not playing so well,” he said about his father. His father replied that if Fridrik thought he could do better, he should take his place. Fridrik did it and won.
He played in his first tournament at the age of 11. At the age of 13, he was at the master level and among the best 15 players in Iceland. At 17, he won the national championship, the first of the six titles of this type.
He won the Scandinavian championship of 1953 and shared first place with Viktor Korchnoi, one of the best players of the 20th century, at the International Hasting Chess Congress 1955-1956, then one of the best tournaments in the world, held in Hastings, England.
In 1958, he qualified for the interzonal tournament in Portoroz, Yugoslavia, where he met, then beat, Mr. Fischer. He and Mr. Fischer equalized for fifth place, who qualified them for the candidates tournament, held a challenger for the world championship. His game in this tournament has earned Mr. Olafsson the highest title of failures, Grandmaster, making him one of the 50 in the world at the time.
In the candidates tournament in 1959, also in Yugoslavia, he did not do so well, finishing seventh among eight contenders. “I was not really prepared,” he said. “I just came too fast.”
He would never participate in this tournament again.
While continuing to contribute occasionally, Mr. Olafsson began to focus more on becoming a lawyer, studying at the Icelandic Academy in Law and the University of Iceland, then working at the Icelandic Ministry of Justice.
But then, in 1972, Reyjavik was selected as the world championship site between Mr. Fischer and Boris Spassky, the reigning champion of Russia.
Mr. Fischer won, in what has become known as “Match of the Century”, arousing the world interest of failures. He also woke up Mr. Olafsson’s passion for the game. He decided to try another stroke to play professionally.
“I wanted to see how much I could realize,” he said.
His second passage did not succeed, although he equalized for the first in an annual tournament at Wijk Aan Zee, in the Netherlands, in front of the best players like Mikhail Tal, the former world champion.
Mr. Olafsson was elected fourth President of the World Federation of Chess in 1978. His mandate was dominated by the problems surrounding the rivalry between Anatoly Karpov, the champion of the Soviet Union, and Mr. Korchnoi, a former Soviet star who had defective in the West in 1976.
Mr. Karpov and Mr. Korchnoi had played for the Championship in the Philippines just before Mr. Olafsson took office, in what had easily been the most bitter match in history: Mr. Karpov has kept the title by winning six games and losing five, with 21 others ending with prints.
In 1981, Mr. Korchnoi again qualified to face Mr. Karpov, this time in Italy. But Mr. Korchnoi’s wife, Bella, and his son, Igor, were refused outing visas to leave the Soviet Union; Igor had been imprisoned for refusing to join the Soviet army.
Mr. Olafsson sought to obtain his release and postponed the match for three months when he went to Moscow to negotiate. In the end, the Soviet authorities agreed to release family members, but only after the match, which Mr. Karpov won easily.
Despite the resolution, the Soviet authorities put pressure against the re -election of Olafsson as president of the Federation in 1982, throwing their support for Florencio Campomanes, a Philippin, who won the position. Mr. Olafsson retired in chess a second time. In 1983, he was appointed secretary of the Icelandic parliament and held this position for 22 years until his retirement in 2005.
He was born in Reykjavík on January 26, 1935.
His survivors include his wife, Audur Juliusdottir; his daughters, Bergljot and Aslaug; Five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
During his career, Mr. Olafsson recorded two victories each against Mr. Fischer, Mr. Tal and Tigran Petrosian, an Armenian-Soviet player who was world champion for six years before Mr. Spassky won the title.
He also faced Mr. Karpov during a world championship tournament in Buenos Aires in 1980, but in curious circumstances. Mr. Olafsson attended his opening ceremony as head of the World Chess Federation when a competitor did not appear; Mr. Olafsson was recruited to fill the position. And that led him to a match against Mr. Karpov, who was considered to be practically unbeatable at the time.
Mr. Olafsson won, becoming the only president in office of the Federation to beat the defending world champion in an official competition.
Ash wu Contributed reports.
