[11][12][13] In 1949, Regina moved the family to Manhattan[14] and the following year to Brooklyn, New York City, where she studied for her master's degree in nursing and subsequently began working in that field.

Benson and Nicholas continued their work and gathered additional evidence in court records, personal interviews, and a summary of an FBI investigation written by J. Edgar Hoover, which confirmed their earlier conclusions.

"[12] As a result, on November 14, 1950, Regina sent a postcard to the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, seeking to place an ad inquiring whether other children of Bobby's age might be interested in playing chess with him.

The paper rejected her ad, because no one could figure out how to classify it, but forwarded her inquiry to Hermann Helms, the "Dean of American Chess", who told her that Master Max Pavey, former Scottish champion, would be giving a simultaneous exhibition on January 17, 1951.

[54] In November, Fischer played in the 1956 Eastern States Open Championship in Washington, D.C., tying for second with William Lombardy, Nicholas Rossolimo, and Arthur Feuerstein, with Hans Berliner taking first by a half-point.

[96] Most observers doubted that a 15-year-old with no international experience could finish among the six qualifiers at the Interzonal, but Fischer told journalist Miro Radoicic, "I can draw with the grandmasters, and there are half-a-dozen patzers in the tournament I reckon to beat.

[99] The Soviet GM Yuri Averbakh observed, In the struggle at the board this youth, almost still a child, showed himself to be a full-fledged fighter, demonstrating amazing composure, precise calculation and devilish resourcefulness.

[106][107] At the Zürich International Tournament, spring 1959, Fischer finished a point behind future world champion Mikhail Tal and a half-point behind Yugoslavian GM Svetozar Gligorić.

In letters to Rodker, Fischer's mother stated her desire to pursue her own "obsession" of training in medicine and wrote that her son would have to live in their Brooklyn apartment without her: "It sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old to his own devices, but he is probably happier that way".

He played four games more than Petrosian, faced stiffer opposition,[160] and would have won the gold if he had accepted Florin Gheorghiu's draw offer, rather than declining it and suffering his only loss.

[164] Both former world champion Tigran Petrosian and Belgian-American International Master George Koltanowski, the leader of the American team that year, felt that Fischer was justified in not participating in the Olympiad.

[167] In 1960, Fischer tied for first place with Soviet star Boris Spassky at the strong Mar del Plata Tournament in Argentina, winning by a two-point margin, scoring 13½/15 (+13−1=1),[168][169] ahead of David Bronstein.

'"[214] Fischer, eligible as US Champion, decided against his participation in the 1964 Amsterdam Interzonal, taking himself out of the 1966 World Championship cycle,[215] even after FIDE changed the format of the eight-player Candidates Tournament from a round-robin to a series of knockout matches, which eliminated the possibility of collusion.

[220][221][222][223] Luděk Pachman observed that Fischer "was handicapped by the longer playing session resulting from the time wasted in transmitting the moves, and that is one reason why he lost to three of his chief rivals.

[275] Fischer then played first board for the US Team in the 19th Chess Olympiad in Siegen, where he won an individual Silver medal, scoring 10/13 (+8−1=4),[157] with his only loss being to World Champion Boris Spassky.

[303] On August 8, 1971, while preparing for his last Candidates match with former world champion Tigran Petrosian, Fischer won the Manhattan Chess Club Rapid Tournament, scoring 21½/22 against a strong field.

[333] According to Soviet Grandmaster Nikolai Krogius, Fischer "was paying great attention to sport, and that he was swimming and even boxing …"[334] The match took place in Reykjavík from July to September 1972.

Kasparov remarked, "Fischer fits ideologically into the context of the Cold War era: a lone American genius challenges the Soviet chess machine and defeats it".

Yes, this was quite natural: the champion deserves this, not to mention the fact that further play to the first win in the event of an even score would be nothing short of a lottery – the winner in that case could not claim to have won a convincing victory.There was also the practical issue of hosting an unlimited match.

[371] Due to the continued efforts of US Chess Federation officials,[372] a special FIDE Congress was held in March 1975 in Bergen, Netherlands,[373] in which it was accepted that the match should be of unlimited duration, but the 9–9 clause was once again rejected, by a narrow margin of 35 votes to 32.

[376] Brian Carney opined in The Wall Street Journal that Fischer's victory over Spassky in 1972 left him nothing to prove, except that perhaps someone could someday beat him, and he was not interested in the risk of losing.

[380] Former world champion Garry Kasparov argued that Karpov would have had good chances, because he had beaten Spassky convincingly and was a new breed of tough professional, and indeed had higher-quality games, while Fischer had been inactive for three years.

[408] The US Department of the Treasury warned Fischer before the start of the match that his participation was illegal, that it would violate President George H. W. Bush's Executive Order 12810 imposing United Nations Security Council Resolution 757 sanctions against engaging in economic activities in Yugoslavia.

[414] After the 1992 match with Spassky, Fischer, now a fugitive, slid back into relative obscurity, taking up residence in Budapest, Hungary, and allegedly having a relationship with young Hungarian chess master Zita Rajcsányi.

[437] At the time, Fischer had a passport (originally issued in 1997 and updated in 2003 to add more pages) that, according to US officials, had been revoked in November 2003 due to his outstanding arrest-warrant for the Yugoslavia sanctions violation.

[441] Boris Spassky wrote a letter to US President George W. Bush, asking "For mercy, charity," and, if that was not possible, "to put [him] in the same cell with Bobby Fischer" and "to give [them] a chess set".

"[472] On January 21, Fischer was buried in the small Christian cemetery of Laugardælir church, outside the town of Selfoss, 60 kilometres (37 mi) southeast of Reykjavík, after a Catholic funeral presided over by Fr.

[500] Fischer's sudden reemergence was apparently triggered when some of his belongings, which had been stored in a Pasadena, California, storage unit, were sold by the landlord, who claimed it was in response to nonpayment of rent.

[502][503] Fischer's library contained antisemitic and racist literature such as Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and The White Man's Bible and Nature's Eternal Religion by Ben Klassen, founder of the World Church of the Creator.

[551][552][553] In 1988, Fischer filed for U.S. patent 4,884,255 for a new type of chess clock, which gave each player a fixed period at the start of the game and then added a small increment after each completed move.