Bobby Fischer became the 11th World Chess Champion after winning 7 of the next 19 games.
## What led to his victory?
Fischer's victory made him an instant celebrity, featured on the covers of Life and Sports Illustrated.
He quickly regrouped after losing the first game and forfeiting the second due to camera disturbances.
## How did he achieve this feat?
By the age of 13, Fischer's talents were already gaining notice, with a journalist writing about his focus on the chessboard.
Fischer played in eight national championships from 1957 to 1967 and won every one of them.
## What challenges did he face?
Fischer lost the title by default to Anatoly Karpov and did not compete again until 1992, when he challenged Boris Spassky to play again.
He was arrested in Japan in 2005 for using a revoked U.S. passport and was wanted by American authorities.
## What was the outcome?
Fischer renounced his U.S. citizenship, and Iceland agreed to give him political asylum.
In 1972, Fischer and Spassky faced off in Reykjavik for the World Championship, a contest seen as a symbol of the battle for world supremacy.
Fischer beat Tigran Petrosian in 1970, whom Boris Spassky had dethroned as world champion the year before.
As an 13-year-old, Fischer took on 21 opponents, 20 of them adults, in a YMCA in Jersey City, New Jersey, and won 19 of the games, lost one, and tied one.
In 1956, a journalist wrote about Fischer, saying his goal was the U.S. National Chess Championships, and he had made an excellent start toward it.
Fischer returned to international attention in 1970, when the world's best players gathered in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in a match billed as 'The USSR vs. The Rest of the World'.
The match between Fischer and Spassky was staged in the middle of the cold war, when the USSR and the United States were engaged in space and arms races.
Fischer's victory in the World Chess Championship was a significant event, with Bobby Fischer becoming a household name.