10 Interesting Stories From The World Of Chess

Other films have used chess as plot points, from Harry Potter to James Bond. The themes mentioned in the previous entry about sacrifice and "losing the battle to win the war" are usually present and lend themselves well to cinema story-telling.

There are a few where the game and players are in fact the main focus. Searching for Bobby Fischer follows a young boy with an aptitude for chess who is being coached to be as aggressive as the legendary Fischer. Anyone with an interest in the man would do well to look up Bobby Fischer Against the World, a documentary released in 2011.

Fischer was a chess prodigy whose rating ran as high as 2785. He became the World Chess Champion, beating Boris Spassky at a time when Cold War tensions were still high, which was viewed as a symbolic victory for the "free" West over the entire Soviet chess system.

Despite his incredible talent and abilities over the board, Bobby began to behave strangely and went away from chess entirely for a long time. Despite his mother being Jewish, he had long been making strong anti-Semitic remarks and was also quoted as saying he was glad the September 11th attacks happened.

He died in 2008 at the age of 64.