The Brooklyn boy who defied the Soviet empire

Some people’s names are enough to tell the story of an era. Bobby Fischer is one of them. Born in Chicago in 1943 and raised in Brooklyn, he learned chess at six and became an international grandmaster before turning sixteen. Fourteen years later, he sat down opposite the Soviet world champion Boris Spassky, in a tiny country of the far North, for a duel the whole world followed like a Cold War battle.

This digital journal was born from a long-standing passion: chess, its history and the people who shaped it. It gathers timelines, stories, game analyses, period photographs and a final quiz, to share that passion and inform readers in a clear and checked way.

You can read the files in order or jump straight to the one that interests you. Each file is illustrated, and the analysed games can be played move by move on an interactive chessboard. At the end, a five-question quiz lets you check what you have learned.