He was born in Chicago, USA in 1943 and brought up in Brooklyn where his mother moved after she was divorced in 1945. He learned to play chess at the age of 6 and soon became deeply absorbed in the game saying "All I want to do, ever, is play chess."
Beginning at age 14, Fischer won 8 United States Championships, including the 1963-64 Tournament 11-0, the only perfect score in its history. By 15, he was the youngest ever Grandmaster (General Motors) and the youngest ever candidate for the World Championship. By the early 1970’s, he was dominating his peers on the chess board, winning 20 consecutive matches in the 1970 Interzonal. By 1972, he had won the World Championship from Boris Spassky (his biggest rival) of the Soviet Union. Many viewed this match as an extension of the Cold War. In 1975, Fischer did not defend his title due to an inability to agree on conditions with FIDE, the International Chess Federation responsible for professional chess worldwide. He became a recluse and retired from international chess, with one exception in 1992, where he played Spassky again for a reported $5,000,000 purse. This event ultimately led to an arrest warrant being issued for Fischer and he never returned to the United States. In later years, Fischer came into further conflict with his own government, often publicly making anti-American and anti-Jewish statements. When his passport was eventually revoked and he was held in Japan for 9 months under threat of extradition, Iceland granted him citizenship, where he lived until his death 3 years later. No player before or since has had such a large margin between themselves and their rivals as Fischer did in the early 1970’s and had it not been for his constant demands over playing conditions and money in World Championship matches, and his relatively brief career, he too could have been a contender for the number one spot.
