The match took place concurrently with the World Chess Congress held in Madrid, December 1988. It was an eight round Scheveningen event with the rapid time control. The boards were electronically connected to 16 telebeams that broadcasted moves live to the audience. The Soviets were led by the World Champion Kasparov, but there was no Karpov who was in Mazatlan, Mexico. The World's (GMA) top boards were Kortschnoj, Speelman and Ljubojević. The event was a charity one: the organizers donated 18.5 million pesetas (ca. $160,000) to the UNICEF Childcare Aid Fund. There was a seminar discussing the issues of blind held alongside with the games. Kasparov and Beliavski gave an exhibition of blind simul on Tuesday. The world champion offered one-by-one game to Miguel Durán, secretary general of ONCE, who replied amused: "Kasparov is a bit pushy, but the proposal seems OK to me, because I also play blind!" Kasparov won in just one hour.

The Soviets started badly being down by 5½-10½ after two rounds. The home player Illescas won two consecutive games vs Gurevich and Psakhis respectively. Kasparov barely tied vs Cuban GM Nogueiras in the first round. As he beat Speelman in a brisk game in round no. 2 he sat among the public with the pout on his face to see how the Soviets were doing. — Uff! — he suddenly exclaimed: Dolmatov had just beaten Hjartarson.

Day two was a bit better for USSR. After dreadful day one there was a meeting of the Soviet team chaired by Garry Kasparov, where the world champion analyzed the reasons of bad play of his team-mates. As they lost yet again in round three by 5-3 (no draws!) the margin of World's lead extended to 7 points. Suddenly, later on that day, the Soviets revived to beat the World by 5½-2½ and close the gap down to four points (18-14). Kasparov's mood blew hot and chold on: deeply concentrated in the beginning of the day, angry with what his team showed in round three and full of jubilant joy at the end of the day — "It's very important we have finally managed to react. We are going to win at the end."

Round five was a very close one as six games ended in hard-fought draws, only bottom boards broke the balance; still the result of that round was a 4-4 tie. The World had all the chances to get decisive advantage, but did not convert a few won positions to wins. Ljubojević provided peevish comment on Speelman's play — "It's unbelievable. He had decisive material advantage and as much as two minutes left. But he played like a kid under terrible time-pressure". In the evening round the Soviets earned a minimal advantage to win 4½-3½. It was still not enough, as the World kept safe three point lead with the last two rounds to come. Illescas Córdoba lost four games in a row after excellent start, while Beliavsky blundered in a draw ending to diminish Soviet chances.

Round seven was landmark moment of the match. According to Kasparov's prophecy, the Soviets steamrolled over helpless World taking a classical "Yugoslav" win, with four victories with white, and four draws with black. The USSR went into one point lead then, with last round to go. The race was extremely close but all in all the Soviets managed to score a ramprt 4-4 draw to leave them one point ahead in the final standings. Kortschnoj and Hjartarson won their games, but these wins were sole compensation for two early losses and so the giant match ended 32½-31½ in favour of the Soviet Union. Best players were Gurevich (only one to score 4 wins), Kasparov and Kortschnoj.