Chess, the musical is a story that involves a politically driven Cold War-era chess tournament between two men – An American grandmaster and a Soviet grandmaster – and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. Although the protagonist were not intended to represent any real individuals. The character of the American grandmaster was loosely based on Babby Fischer, while elements of the story may have been inspired by the chess careers of Russian grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov.