The Game of the Century
A thirteen-year-old leaves his queen to be taken — and wins her back with a windmill of checks. Bobby Fischer announces himself to the world.
Donald Byrne against Bobby Fischer · Third Rosenwald Trophy · 1956.10.17. · 0-1
The story behind it
In October 1956 the Rosenwald Memorial brought twelve of America's best players to the Marshall Chess Club in Greenwich Village. Donald Byrne, twenty-six, a former U.S. Open champion, was paired in round eight against the youngest competitor: Bobby Fischer, a thirteen-year-old from Brooklyn in his first serious invitational.
Fischer played the Grünfeld, and for ten moves the game looked like a lesson: the master pressing, the boy conceding the center. Then Byrne moved the same piece twice at the wrong moment, and Fischer's 11...Na4 turned the board inside out. Two moves later a knight took a pawn Byrne thought was poisoned; four moves after that came the move the game is named for. 17...Be6 — Black's queen left standing where the bishop on g5 could simply take her.
Byrne took. What followed was a windmill: 18...Bxc4+ and then check after check from knight and bishop, each one peeling another piece off White's position while the white king shuttled between g1 and f1. When the dust settled Fischer had rook, two bishops and a pawn for the queen — a won game by arithmetic, played out with an adult's technique. Byrne, perhaps in tribute, perhaps in disbelief, played on until the boy mated him on move forty-one with every black piece taking part.
Hans Kmoch annotated the game in Chess Review under a title that has never needed revising. Fourteen months later Fischer was U.S. Champion at fourteen. Sixteen years later he was champion of the world — and the game he played at thirteen was still the one every American child was shown first.
The moments
Click one — the board above jumps there.
The players
Donald Byrne
U.S. Open champion at twenty-three, Olympiad player, college professor — one of the finest American masters of his generation, and a gracious one. He played the boy like an equal, got a masterpiece played against him, and reportedly took pride in his part in it.
Bobby Fischer
Thirteen years old, national junior champion, one year from the U.S. title and sixteen from Reykjavík. This is the game where the story of the greatest American player begins — with a queen left en prise and the coldest nerves in the room.
The score
The moves are history's; we checked them against it.
ECO A15 · our PGN header reads Date 1956.10.17.
↓ DOWNLOAD PGN
