Pawn Sacrifice is a 2014 American biographical psychological drama film about Bobby Fischer, a chess grandmaster and the eleventh world champion.

In 1972, Bobby Fischer tears apart his hotel room in a paranoid delusional state, believing he is being spied upon by the Soviet KGB.

He enters a team tournament in Varna, Bulgaria, where he realizes Soviet grandmasters are deliberately drawing games with the collusion of the World Chess Federation.

Erupting in a rant that this system makes it impossible for a non-Soviet player to win the championship, Bobby quits the tournament and gives up chess.

At the height of the Cold War, Soviet domination of the World Chess Championship is being exploited for propaganda as proof that the Communist system is superior to American democracy.

U.S. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger closely monitor and encourage Bobby's progress.

During a tournament in Santa Monica, California, Bobby loses to Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky, the world champion.

Privately, Lombardy tells Marshall that excessive focus on chess strategy has destroyed the sanity of the game's greatest players.

Meeting with Marshall, Bobby's sister Joan quotes from her brother's letters about how the Communists collude with International Jewry to destroy him.

Director Edward Zwick explained the meaning of the film's title: "You have Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon calling Bobby Fischer; you have Brezhnev and the KGB agents following Boris Spassky.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Anchored by a sensitive performance from Tobey Maguire, Pawn Sacrifice adds another solidly gripping drama to the list of films inspired by chess wiz Bobby Fischer.