Bobby Fischer Trivia
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66 free Bobby Fischer trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Bobby Fischer beat the Soviet chess machine alone, then spent the rest of his life at war with almost everyone. This quiz follows the whole arc. It opens with the Brooklyn boy who learned from a candy-store set, the seven-year-old holding out for fifteen minutes in a simultaneous display, the queen sacrifice against Donald Byrne that became the Game of the Century, and the 14-year-old US champion who quit school two years later because you don't learn anything there. The middle section is the road to Reykjavík: the collusion accusation at Curaçao that changed how the world championship is decided, the 11-0 US Championship, the 6-0 sweeps of Taimanov and Larsen, the twenty-game winning streak, the forfeit in game two, the back-room game three and the Cold War headlines. Then the long strange aftermath: the three demands FIDE would not meet, the title handed to Karpov, the years of silence, the 1992 rematch in embargoed Yugoslavia, the arrest at Narita, the Icelandic passport and the churchyard at Laugardælir. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen Pawn Sacrifice; the expert tier reaches Sveti Stefan, the 1956 rating list and the Pepsi-Cola match. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Fischer, the 1972 and 1992 matches and his inventions, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. Our chess and World Chess Championship pages sit alongside this one.
30 of 66 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Nixon adviser made a personal phone call in 1972 to urge Fischer to play for the world title?
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger placed the call because the match against the Soviet champion had become a Cold War contest, and Fischer, who had been holding out over money and conditions, finally flew out.
Q 02In which city was the 1972 world title match, dubbed the Match of the Century, played?
Reykjavík
Reykjavík hosted the whole match only after a plan to split it with Belgrade, Fischer's own first choice, fell through.
Q 03What was unusual about Fischer's three years as world chess champion, from 1972 to 1975?
He played no competitive games
He played no competitive games as champion, sitting out his whole reign before letting the title go in 1975, and he stayed away from serious play for almost 20 years.
Q 04What did Iceland's parliament grant Fischer in 2005 to free him from detention in Japan?
Full citizenship
Full citizenship came by a special law in March 2005, after Japan had refused to release him on lesser papers, and within days he was free.
Q 05Fischer grew up in Brooklyn, but in which city was he born in March 1943?
Chicago
Chicago is on a birth certificate naming a German father who never entered the United States; his mother took the children through California and Arizona before settling in Brooklyn.
Q 06At 14, Fischer became the youngest-ever winner of which event, which he went on to win eight times?
The US Championship
The US Championship fell to him in January 1958, two months before he turned 15; he won it all eight times he entered, and that first win sent him to his first world title qualifier.
Q 07Which variant, randomising the starting position of the back-rank pieces, was Fischer's invention?
Chess960
Chess960 is named for its 960 possible starting positions, which Fischer wanted so that games could no longer be decided by memorised opening preparation.
Q 08Who was named World Champion by default in 1975 when Fischer refused to defend his title?
Anatoly Karpov
Anatoly Karpov became champion in April 1975 without playing a single game for the title, after Fischer resigned it by telegram rather than play under FIDE's rules.
Q 09What did Fischer do at the 1963/64 US Championship that no player had ever done there?
Won every game
Won every game: his 11–0 sweep is the event's only perfect score, and one official congratulated the runner-up on winning the tournament and Fischer on winning the exhibition.
Q 10Which 1969 Fischer book is regarded as essential reading in chess literature?
My 60 Memorable Games
My 60 Memorable Games was written with help from Larry Evans, and Fischer unusually put some of his own draws and losses among the annotated games.
Q 11Which actor played Fischer in the 2014 film "Pawn Sacrifice"?
Tobey Maguire
Tobey Maguire also produced the film, which cost a reported $19 million and took in under $6 million worldwide.
Q 12The 1993 film "Searching for Bobby Fischer" is actually about which young chess prodigy?
Joshua Waitzkin
Joshua Waitzkin was a seven-year-old New Yorker hailed as a new Bobby Fischer; the film follows his father Fred's memoir, so the champion of the title is never a character in it.
Q 13Why was Fischer arrested at Tokyo's Narita Airport in July 2004?
His US passport had been revoked
Q 21Fischer accused the Soviets of collusion after which 1962 Candidates tournament, prompting FIDE to switch to knockout matches?
Curaçao
Curaçao saw three Soviet players draw quickly among themselves to save their strength; Fischer cried foul in Sports Illustrated, Moscow called it sour grapes, and the pact is now widely accepted as real.
Q 22Which game show got Fischer to Moscow in 1958, when its producers arranged plane tickets for him and his sister?
I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret put the young US champion in front of its panel and paid the fares; in Moscow he demanded a game with world champion Botvinnik, was refused, and beat the local masters at blitz instead.
Q 23Before the 1958 Interzonal, what did the teenage Fischer say he would do against the grandmasters?
His US passport had been revoked in 2003, and he spent months in detention fighting deportation to face charges over his sanctions-breaking 1992 rematch.
Q 14Fischer's 1992 rematch with Spassky, which led to a US arrest warrant, was played in which sanctioned country?
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia was under UN sanctions, and Fischer spat on the US Treasury order forbidding the match in front of the press; the warrant that followed meant he never went home again.
Q 15What did the 13-year-old Fischer give up on move 17 of his 1956 "Game of the Century" against Donald Byrne?
His queen
His queen was the bait: Byrne took it and got a rook, two bishops and a pawn thrown back at him before being mated, and a magazine editor gave the game its grand name.
Q 16Which grandmaster did Fischer beat 6–0 in the 1971 Candidates semi-final, right after sweeping Mark Taimanov by the same score?
Bent Larsen
Bent Larsen had been his rival as the best player outside the Soviet Union, which made the whitewash a shock; the two sweeps are the only perfect scores in Candidates match history.
Q 17Mark Taimanov, punished by Soviet officials for losing 6–0 to Fischer, had which other profession?
Concert pianist
Concert pianist: after the last game he told Fischer, "Well, I still have my music," but officials took his stipend, stopped his foreign travel and kept him off the concert stage too.
Q 18How did Fischer lose the second game of the 1972 world championship match?
By forfeit over the cameras
By forfeit over the cameras, which left him 2–0 down; Spassky, unwilling to win by default, agreed to play game three in a small back room, and Fischer took over from there.
Q 19Which British financier put up an extra $125,000 to lure Fischer to the 1972 match?
Jim Slater
Jim Slater, a London financier, took the prize fund to an unheard-of $250,000 while Fischer was still refusing to fly out, and that gesture is credited with saving the match.
Q 20What happened to US Chess Federation membership in the year after Fischer's 1972 title win?
It doubled
It doubled, near enough: the federation counted about 31,000 members in the summer of 1972 and about 59,000 a year later, a surge remembered as the Fischer Boom.
Draw with them
Draw with them and beat the weaker players was his plan, and it worked: he qualified for the Candidates, which made him, at 15, the youngest grandmaster there had ever been.
Q 24Fischer dropped out of which Brooklyn high school at 16, a school also attended by Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond?
Erasmus Hall
Erasmus Hall gave him a gold medal for his chess, and he still dropped out at 16, because classes took time away from the board.
Q 25Which former Scottish champion did the seven-year-old Fischer play in a simultaneous exhibition in January 1951, holding on for 15 minutes?
Max Pavey
Max Pavey was the master his mother was pointed to after a newspaper could not classify her advert for chess-playing children; Bobby lost, but a club president in the crowd took him on as a pupil.
Q 26Which Pasadena-based church did Fischer follow and fund for years before denouncing its founder as a false prophet?
The Worldwide Church of God
The Worldwide Church of God reportedly received about $61,000 of his 1972 earnings; when its founder's prophecies failed he walked away, saying its leaders had cleaned out his pockets.
Q 27How did Fischer play a 1965 Havana tournament without leaving New York?
Teleprinter relay from the Marshall Chess Club
Teleprinter relay from the Marshall Chess Club got him round a State Department ban on travel to Cuba; sessions at the Capablanca Memorial ran up to twelve hours and he still tied for second.
Q 28Fischer's 1992 rematch with Spassky set a record for which of these?
The largest prize fund
The largest prize fund in chess, $5 million, went to an unofficial rematch with no title at stake: Spassky was by then ranked around 100th in the world, and beating him still paid Fischer more than $3 million.
Q 29Fischer's 1988 patent covered which chess clock innovation, later standard in top play?
A time increment added after each move
A time increment added after each move was his cure for the blunder-strewn scrambles before the flag falls; the patent was granted in 1989, and digital clocks later made the idea routine.
Q 30Which teaching method does the million-selling 1966 primer "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" use?
Programmed instruction
Programmed instruction has the reader answer a question on each page, then turn over for Fischer's answer; unusually for a chess book it needs no chess notation, and it has been called the best-selling chess book ever.