Mikhail Tal (Latvian: Mihails Tāls; Russian: Михаил Нехемьевич Таль, Michail Nechem'evič Tal, [mʲixʌˈiɫ nʲɪˈxɛmʲɪvʲit͡ɕ ˈtal]; sometimes transliterated Mihails Tals or Mihail Tal; November 9, 1936 – June 28, 1992) was a Soviet-Latvian chess Grandmaster and the eighth World Chess Champion.

Widely regarded as a creative genius, and the best attacking player of all time, he played in a daring, combinational style. His play was known above all for improvisation and unpredictability. Every game, he once said, was as inimitable and invaluable as a poem. He was often called "Misha", a diminutive for Mikhail, and "The magician from Riga". Both The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games (Burgess, Nunn & Emms 2004) and Modern Chess Brilliancies (Evans 1970) include more games by Tal than any other player. Tal was also a highly-regarded chess writer.

He holds the records for both the first and second longest unbeaten streaks in competitive chess history. Many authorities consider him to have been the greatest attacking Grandmaster in the history of chess. On May 28, 1992, dying from kidney failure, he left hospital to play at the Moscow blitz tournament, where he defeated Garry Kasparov. He died one month later. The Mikhail Tal Memorial is held in Moscow each year since 2006 to honour his memory.

Vladimir Simagin (born Moscow June 21, 1919, died Kislovodsk September 25, 1968) was a Russian Grandmaster of chess. He was three times Moscow champion (1947, 1956, and 1959), helped to train Vasily Smyslov to the World Championship, and made many significant contributions to chess openings. He died of a heart attack while playing in the Kislovodsk tournament.

Vladimir Pavlovich Simagin was a much-admired Soviet player and teacher. He was a late bloomer by chess standards, although much of this can be put down to the timing of World War II, which stopped most chess competition in the Soviet Union for several years. He received the International Master title in 1950- the year F.I.D.E. implemented the title- and earned the Grandmaster title in 1962. He also earned the International Master title in Correspondence chess in 1965, and was Soviet correspondence champion in 1964.

He scored 8.5/17 in the 1945 Moscow Championship, for a tied 7th-8th places, well behind champion Vasily Smyslov. Simagin's first important high-class result was second place in the 1946 Moscow Championship, with 11/15, behind winner David Bronstein. In the 1946 Baltic Championship at Vilnius, he scored 13/19 while playing 'hors concours', and this was good for fourth place, behind the top placed Yuri Averbakh (also h.c.). In the 1947 Moscow Championship, he tied for top place with Bronstein and Georgy Rivinsky, with 9/14, and then won the playoff match-tournament. Also in 1947, he tied for 1st-2nd with Semyon Furman in the Championship of the Spartak Club, with 15/19, and also won that playoff match.

Jan Timman (born 14 December 1951) is a Dutch chess Grandmaster who was one of the world's leading players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. At the peak of his career he was considered to be the best non-Soviet player and was known as "The Best of the West". He has won the Dutch Chess Championship nine times and has been a Candidate for the World Championship several times.

Timman was an outstanding prospect in his early teens, and at Jerusalem 1967 played in the World Junior Championship, aged fifteen, finishing third.

He received the International Master title in 1971, and in 1974 attained Grandmaster status, making him the Netherlands' third after Max Euwe and Jan Hein Donner. In the same year he won the Dutch Championship for the first time, having finished second in 1972. He was to win it again on many more occasions through 1996. His first notable international success was at Hastings 1973/74, where he shared victory with Tal, Kuzmin, and Szabó. A string of victories quickly followed at Sombor 1974 (with Boris Gulko), Netanya 1975, Reykjavik 1976 (with Fridrik Olafsson), Amsterdam IBM 1978, Nikšić 1978, and Bled/Portorož 1979.

Robert James "Bobby" Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author. After ending his competitive career, he proposed a new variant of chess and a modified chess timing system. His idea of adding a time increment after each move is now standard, and his variant Chess960 is gaining in popularity.

A chess prodigy, at age 13 Fischer won a "brilliancy" that became known as The Game of the Century. Starting at age 14, he played in eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a point. At age 15½, he became both the youngest grandmaster and the youngest candidate for the World Championship up to that time. He won the 1963–64 U.S. Championship 11–0, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. In the early 1970s he became one of the most dominant players in modern history—winning the 1970 Interzonal by a record 3½-point margin and winning 20 consecutive games, including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps in the Candidates Matches. According to research by Jeff Sonas, in 1971 Fischer had separated himself from the rest of the world by a larger margin of playing skill than any player since the 1870s. He became the first official World Chess Federation (FIDE) number-one rated chess player in July 1971, and his 54 total months at number one is the third longest of all time.

Jørgen Bent Larsen (4 March 1935 – 9 September 2010) was a Danish chess Grandmaster and author. Larsen was known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play and he was the first western player to pose a serious challenge to the Soviet Union's dominance of chess. He is considered to be the strongest chess player born in Denmark and the strongest from Scandinavia until the emergence of Magnus Carlsen.

Larsen was a six time Danish Champion and a candidate for the World Chess Championship on four occasions, reaching the semi final three times. He had multiple wins over all seven World Champions who held the title from 1948 to 1985: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, and Anatoly Karpov., but lifetime minus scores against them. On a percentage basis, his best score against a World Champion was with Max Euwe. Larsen and Euwe met over the board only once, at the Munich Olympiad in 1958; the game ended in a draw. From the early 1970s, he divided his year between Las Palmas and Buenos Aires, with his Argentinian-born wife. He suffered from diabetes and died in 2010 from a cerebral haemorrhage.