14th Chess Olympiad — Leipzig 1960

◇Forty nations, four groups

A record forty teams entered, drawn into four preliminary groups of ten. The top three of each advanced to the twelve-team Championship Final; the next three to Final B; and the remaining sixteen to a Swiss-system Final C of eleven rounds. As in this era, the standings here are section totals, so a Final A number is not directly comparable with a lower group's — gold was decided inside Final A.

The Soviet squad was extraordinary even by its own standards, with Tal, Botvinnik, Keres and Smyslov among its ranks. They swept every match on the way to 34 board points and the title.

◇A clean sweep

The Soviet Union won all twenty of its matches across the preliminaries and Final A — a flawless run that left the United States five points behind on 29 and Yugoslavia seven back on 27, with Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria filling out the upper table. Individual board golds were shared widely: Austria's Karl Robatsch topped board one, Botvinnik and Keres led boards two and three for the Soviets, and the reserves Smyslov and Tigran Petrosian posted the highest percentages of all, Petrosian scoring 12/13.

World champion Tal took the first board for the Soviet Union and turned in a fighting 11/15, his only loss the celebrated upset by England's Jonathan Penrose — a result that did nothing to dent the team's perfect match record.

◇Enter Fischer

Leipzig also saw the arrival of the player who would eventually end Soviet supremacy. Bobby Fischer, seventeen, played board one for the United States and helped carry his team to silver; his wild draw with Tal was one of the most talked-about games of the tournament.