Match of the Century Review

boardgamequest.com:

A two-person trick taker disguised as a tug of war about a game of chess.

For several weeks when I was 5, when I got home from kindergarten, I knew where my mom would be: in front of the TV watching chess. It was 1972 and the whole world seemed to stop to watch American Bobby Fischer challenge the reigning world champion, Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, in a chess match that served as another battlefront in the Cold War. I had no idea how to play chess (nor did I understand the geopolitical ramifications of the two players’ nationalities) but I loved how intently my mother was watching the PBS recreations of the matches. And now it’s a board game!

“Match of the Century” by acclaimed designer, Paolo Mori, and published by Capstone Games, takes its cue from this famous chess duel, but rather than playing chess, you and your opponent will create the Spassky/Fischer battle in a two-person tug of war that is secretly a four-handed trick-taker played over six to twelve rounds.

When you take Match of the Century out of the box and begin to set up, people will assume you’re about to play chess. There are a lot of wooden chess pieces: 2 Kings, one Queen, and a whole bunch of pawns. But in essence, the chess pieces are a head fake—this is a card game. And as a second head fake, while this game looks like it comes from the same DNA as Matthias’ Kramer’s Watergate (also published by Capstone), the only real similarities are the size of the box and a shared setting during the Nixon administration.

So, if it’s not chess and it’s not a straightforward tug-of-war like Watergate, what is it?  It’s a two-person trick taker, where the tricks are worth 1, 2, 3, and 4 points and whoever gets more points over four hands wins the round (or if they tie, both win), and whoever wins six rounds first wins the Match… of the Century.

The rules of Match of the Century are simple. Players fill their hand up to a limit set by their position on an endurance track, which ebbs and flows as the