US Championship 1954 — New York

Incomplete record. This archive holds 88 of the 91 games played; 3 are missing.

The ninth US Championship doubled as the American zonal of the world championship cycle, so the fourteen players in New York were competing for places in the next Interzonal as well as for the national title. Arthur Bisguier, twenty-four years old, won it unbeaten — seven wins, six draws, 10 from 13 — a point ahead of the defending champion Larry Evans. It was the only US Championship Bisguier ever won.

◇Thirteen rounds without a loss

Bisguier had earned his place by winning the US Championship Candidates tournament at Philadelphia in September 1953 with 8½ from 10. In New York he beat Max Pavey in the first round and was never beaten himself: seven wins and six draws, among them a draw with Evans in round ten and a last-round win over Ariel Mengarini.

Evans lost only one game, to Eliot Hearst in round nine, and finished second on 9. Herbert Seidman was third on 8, with Pavey and James Sherwin sharing fourth on 7½. Nicolas Rossolimo scored 7. Hans Berliner tied for eighth on 6½ — a modest over-the-board result from a player who would go on to win the fifth World Correspondence Chess Championship, held from 1965 to 1968, by a three-point margin.

◇The zonal that went unused

Because the championship served as the zonal, it carried qualification for the 1955 Interzonal at Gothenburg. Bisguier and Evans took places through it, and Reshevsky — who was not in the New York field — was eligible as well. Cree records that Reshevsky and Evans both withdrew in order to play the US Open instead, and were not replaced.

So the new champion went to Sweden alone. In a twenty-one-player field won by David Bronstein ahead of Paul Keres, Bisguier finished seventeenth on 8/20.

“as friendly as a puppy”

◇The rest of 1954

Three days after the championship ended, Bisguier was back at the board in Manhattan for the USA–USSR match at the Hotel Roosevelt, 16–24 June — the first time a Soviet team had played on American soil. The Soviet side won 20–12. Bill Wall's chronology of the year notes that the eleven-year-old Bobby Fischer attended all four rounds and kept score of every game.

Bisguier went on to win the second Pan American Chess Championship at Los Angeles later in 1954, and added the US Open at Oklahoma City in 1956. He returned to the national championship again and again for the rest of his career without repeating the result of this one.