US Championship 1957/58 — New York

The tenth US Championship doubled as the American zonal of the world championship cycle, and it was expected to be another chapter in Samuel Reshevsky's long reign. Instead a fourteen-year-old Brooklyn schoolboy playing his second national championship went through all thirteen rounds without losing a game, finished on 10½ a full point clear, and became the youngest champion in the history of the title — a record that still stands.

◇The fourth Rosenwald

The event was staged as the fourth Lessing J. Rosenwald Trophy tournament, played for the Frank J. Marshall Memorial Trophy across the Manhattan and Marshall chess clubs. Fourteen players were invited: Reshevsky and Arthur Bisguier, the future correspondence world champion Hans Berliner, William Lombardy, James T. Sherwin, Arnold Denker, Edmar Mednis, Herbert Seidman, Sidney Bernstein, Arthur Feuerstein, Attilio Di Camillo, Abe Turner, George Kramer — and Fischer, who arrived with only about 110 official tournament games behind him.

He beat Feuerstein in round one and was never headed. Eight wins, five draws, no defeats: he was the only player in the field to finish the tournament undefeated.

◇The last round

Fischer went into the final round a point ahead and took an eighteen-move draw with Turner. Reshevsky, needing to win, lost instead to Lombardy — a game that took the brilliancy prize — and the title was settled at 10½ to 9½. Sherwin finished third on 9, Lombardy fourth on 7½, Berliner fifth on 7.

Fischer was fourteen years and nine months old. FIDE president Folke Rogard awarded him the International Master title on the strength of the result, and it was the first of the eight US Championships he would win in eight attempts.

◇A seat at Portorož

Because the championship also served as the zonal, the top two places carried seats in the 1958 Interzonal at Portorož. Fischer and Reshevsky qualified; Reshevsky declined to travel and his place went to Sherwin. Fischer went to Yugoslavia that summer, came through the Interzonal into the Candidates, and became the youngest grandmaster in the world.

All 91 games of the round robin are preserved here, so the whole tournament — including every one of Fischer's thirteen — can be replayed in full.