Often visible in the parks around major American cities, chess was nicely captured in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993). In 1972, at the height of the Cold War, chess caught the attention of the American public with the contest between American Bobby Fischer and Soviet Boris Spassky. The American prevailed, but, hating the limelight, Fischer became a recluse and refused to compete for the title again. With no American grandmasters of note to replace him, Americans had to satisfy themselves by watching different Russian champions compete, and trying to determine which Russian was “good”—a man with dissident leanings like Gary Kasparov, and which Russian was “bad”—a man who seemed to represent the Soviet system, for example Anatoly Karpov.

A flourish of interest in the sport occurred with the brief re-emergence of Fischer, but otherwise the end of the Cold War has diminished attention paid to chess and relegated it to its former image as an elite, intellectual and, in high school, nerdy pastime. The emergence of computer chess has popularized the game in new venues.