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.

Donald Byrne (June 12, 1930 – April 8, 1976) was one of the USA's strongest chess players during the 1950s and 1960s.

Born in New York City, he won the U.S. Open Chess Championship in 1953, was awarded the International Master title by FIDE (English: World Chess Federation) in 1962, and played for or captained five U.S. Chess Olympiad teams between 1962 and 1972. His older brother, International Grandmaster Robert Byrne, was also a leading player of that time.

Byrne lost to a 13-year-old Bobby Fischer in the Game of the Century in 1956.

Byrne was a professor of English. He taught at Penn State University from 1961 until his death, having been invited there to teach and to coach the varsity chess team.

Byrne died in Philadelphia of complications arising from lupus. He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2002.

In the following game, Byrne beats perennial world championship contender Efim Geller:

Geller-D. Byrne, Moscow 1955 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 Nc6 8.Qd2 O-O 9.O-O-O Be6 10.Kb1 Rc8 11.g4 Qa5 12.Nxe6 fxe6 13.Bc4 Nd8 14.Be2 Nd7 15.Bd4 Ne5 16.f4 Ndc6 17.Bxe5 dxe5 18.f5 Nd4 19.fxg6 hxg6 20.Rhf1 Rf4 21.g5 b5 22.Bd3 Rcf8 23.Qg2 b4 24.Ne2 Qc5 25.Qh3 Rf3 26.Rxf3 Rxf3 27.Qg4 Rxd3 28.Rc1 Rd1 29.c3 Rxc1+ 30.Kxc1 Nxe2+ 31.Qxe2 bxc3 32.Qg2 cxb2 33.Kxb2 Qb4+ 34.Kc2 a5 35.Qg4 Qc5+ 36.Kb3 Qb6+ 37.Kc3 a4 38.h4 Qd4+ 39.Kc2 Qf2+ 40.Kd3 Qxa2 41.h5 Qb3+ 42.Kd2 gxh5 0-1.

For the football player of the same name, see Larry Evans (American football).

Larry Melvyn Evans (March 22, 1932 – November 15, 2010) was an American chess grandmaster, author, and journalist. He won or shared the U.S. Chess Championship five times and the U.S. Open Chess Championship four times. He wrote a long-running syndicated chess column and wrote or co-wrote more than 20 books on chess.

Evans was born in Manhattan on March 22, 1932, and learned much about the game by playing for ten cents an hour on 42nd Street in New York City^{[citation needed]}, quickly becoming a rising star. At age 14, he tied for fourth-fifth place in the Marshall Chess Club championship. The next year he won it outright, becoming the youngest Marshall champion at that time. He also finished equal second in the U.S. Junior Championship, which led to an article in the September 1947 issue of Chess Review. At 16, he played in the 1948 U.S. Chess Championship, his first, tying for eighth place at 11½–7½. Evans tied with Arthur Bisguier for first place in the U.S. Junior Chess Championship of 1949. By age 18, he had won a New York State championship as well as a gold medal in the Dubrovnik 1950 Chess Olympiad. In the latter, his 90% score (eight wins and two draws) on sixth board tied with Rabar of Yugoslavia for the best result of the entire Olympiad.

Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian (Armenian: Տիգրան Պետրոսյան, Тигран Вартанович Петросян) (17 June 1929 – 13 August 1984) was a Soviet-Armenian grandmaster, and World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. He was nicknamed "Iron Tigran" due to his playing style because of his almost impenetrable defence, which emphasised safety above all else. He was a Candidate for the World Championship on eight occasions (1953, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1971, 1974, 1977 and 1980). He won the world championship in 1963 (against Botvinnik), successfully defended it in 1966 (against Spassky), and lost it in 1969 (to Spassky). Thus he was the defending World Champion or a World Championship candidate in ten consecutive three-year cycles. He won the Soviet Championship four times (1959, 1961, 1969, and 1975). He was recognised as the hardest player to beat in the history of chess by the authors of a 2004 book.

Tigran Petrosian was born to Armenian parents on 17 June 1929 in Tiflis, Georgia, which was then a member of the former Soviet Union. As a young boy, Petrosian was an excellent student and enjoyed studying, as did his brother Hmayak and sister Vartoosh. He learned to play chess at the age of 8, though his illiterate father Vartan encouraged him to continue studying, as he thought chess was unlikely to bring his son any success as a career. Petrosian was orphaned during World War II and was forced to sweep streets to earn a living. It was about this time that his hearing began to deteriorate, a problem that afflicted him throughout his life. In a 1969 interview with Time magazine, he recalled:

Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess Grandmaster and chess prodigy who is currently the number-one ranked player in the world. In January 2010 he became the seventh player in history to be ranked number one in the world on the official FIDE rating list. His peak rating is 2835, the second highest in history, after Garry Kasparov.

On 26 April 2004 Carlsen became a Grandmaster at the age of &1000000000000001300000013 years, &10000000000000148000000148 days, making him the third-youngest Grandmaster in history. On 1 January 2010 the new FIDE rating list was published, and at the age of &1000000000000001900000019 years, &1000000000000003200000032 days, he became the youngest chess player in history to be ranked world number one, breaking the record previously held by Vladimir Kramnik. Carlsen was also the 2009 World blitz chess champion.

His performance at the September–October 2009 Nanjing Pearl Spring tournament has been described as one of the greatest in history and lifted him to an Elo rating of 2801, making him the fifth player to achieve a rating over 2800 – and aged 18 years 10 months at the time, by far the youngest to do so.