Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World

There have been two chess matches featuring USSR vs. Rest of the World, in 1970 and 1984, and one match Russia vs. Rest of the World, in 2002. The USSR team won the first two matches and the "Rest of the World" team won the third match.

The first two matches were between a team from the USSR and a team of players from the "rest of the world". The third match (between Russia and the rest of the world) was the first to occur after the breakup of the Soviet Union, which meant that some countries that had been in the USSR for the first two matches were now on the "Rest of the World" team.

In all of the matches the teams consisted of ten members (plus some substitutes). In the first two matches, the teams were arranged in order (from board 1 through board 10) and each member from one team played four games against his equivalent on the other team. In the third match, each player played a game against ten different members of the other team (a Scheveningen system match), with a faster time control than the first two matches.

As the 20th century entered its final third, it was already apparent to chess historians and enthusiasts that the USSR had raised standards to a level to which other nations could only aspire. The USSR had produced an uninterrupted line of world champions stretching from 1948 to 1970. Since its earliest participation, the USSR had completely dominated team chess events such as the Chess Olympiad and European Team Championship. So pronounced was the gulf between the Soviet national side and their closest competitors, a sterner challenge was required to gauge the full extent of their supremacy. Such a challenge presented itself in 1970, when Max Euwe (the president of FIDE at the time) announced a match to pit the USSR's strength against the collective might of the rest of the world.

If the Soviets saw it as an opportunity to crown their glory, then the world camp were equally determined to show that the emergence of Bobby Fischer as a prospective world champion was symptomatic of a more widespread shift in the power base.

As the Cold War dictated the political mood of the era, the headline writers predictably made much of the event's title.

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Wikipedia