US Championship 1963/64 — New York
Twelve of the strongest players in the country sat down for a single round robin over the 1963 Christmas season, and one of them simply refused to lose. Bobby Fischer, 20 years old, swept all eleven games — the only perfect score in the history of the US Championship — and turned a routine title defense into a piece of American sporting legend that Sports Illustrated and Life both felt compelled to cover.
A field with nowhere to hide
The US Chess Federation gathered twelve players for the 16th championship, organized under tournament director Hans Kmoch: defending champion Fischer, Larry Evans, Pal Benko, Anthony Saidy, Samuel Reshevsky, Robert Byrne, Raymond Weinstein, Arthur Bisguier, William Addison, Edmar Mednis, Robert Steinmeyer, and Donald Byrne — the two Byrne brothers both in the same field. A contemporary account of the season called it one of the strongest US championships yet assembled, with only Bill Lombardy and Nicolas Rossolimo missing from the country's top rank.
Fischer opened round one by beating Mednis and never let up. Round three brought the tournament's signature moment: facing Robert Byrne with the black pieces on 18 December, Fischer offered a knight on move 15 and a second knight on move 18, sacrifices that made no immediate material sense but left White unable to find a defense. Byrne resigned after 21 moves and later wrote of it, 'The culminating combination is of such depth that, even at the very moment at which I resigned, both grandmasters who were commenting on the play for the spectators in a separate room believed I had a won game!' Fischer later chose the game for My 60 Memorable Games, and it won the tournament's Brilliancy Prize.
Eleven for eleven
Fischer's margin was not close: Larry Evans took clear second on 7½, Pal Benko third on 7, with Anthony Saidy and a 51-year-old Samuel Reshevsky sharing fourth on 6½. Kmoch, marking the lopsidedness of it all, joked that he had congratulated Evans on 'winning' the tournament and Fischer separately on 'winning the exhibition.' Not everyone was charmed — Bent Larsen is remembered as saying Fischer had simply been 'playing against children.'
The result extended a run that already looked historic: Fischer had gone through the whole of 1963 with 25½ points from 26 tournament games, and the 11/11 in New York pushed his streak of won tournament games to 22 in a row. It was his sixth US Championship of an eventual eight, the trophy presented to him afterward at the Marshall Chess Club.
“The culminating combination is of such depth that, even at the very moment at which I resigned, both grandmasters who were commenting on the play for the spectators in a separate room believed I had a won game!”
“Motivated by my lopsided result (11–0!), Dr. Kmoch congratulated Evans (the runner-up) on 'winning' the tournament, and then he congratulated me on 'winning the exhibition.'”
A tournament that reached the sports pages
A perfect score at a national championship was rare enough, but a perfect score by a 20-year-old American made news well outside chess. Life magazine profiled Fischer on the strength of it, and Sports Illustrated ran a feature with diagrams of all eleven games. American sports coverage had never treated a chess result like that, years before anyone was talking about Reykjavik.
Final standings
| # | Player | Score | Record | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fischer, Robert James | 11/11 | +11 -0 =0 | games |
| 2 | Evans, Larry Melvyn | 7½/11 | +6 -2 =3 | games |
| 3 | Benko, Pal C | 7/11 | +5 -2 =4 | games |
| =4 | Saidy, Anthony Fred | 6½/11 | +5 -3 =3 | games |
| =4 | Reshevsky, Samuel Herman | 6½/11 | +4 -2 =5 | games |
| 6 | Byrne, Robert Eugene | 5½/11 | +3 -3 =5 | games |
| 7 | Weinstein, Raymond Allen | 5/11 | +5 -6 =0 | games |
| 8 | Bisguier, Arthur Bernard | 4½/11 | +3 -5 =3 | games |
| =9 | Addison, William G | 3½/11 | +2 -6 =3 | games |
| =9 | Mednis, Edmar John | 3½/11 | +2 -6 =3 | games |
| 11 | Steinmeyer, Robert H | 3/11 | +0 -5 =6 | games |
| 12 | Byrne, Donald | 2½/11 | +0 -6 =5 | games |
Cross Table
| Rank | Player | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fischer, Robert James | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2 | Evans, Larry Melvyn | 0 | 1 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| 3 | Benko, Pal C | 0 | 0 | 1 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | ½ | 1 | ½ | ½ | |
| 4 | Saidy, Anthony Fred | 0 | ½ | 0 | 0 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ½ | 1 | |
| 5 | Reshevsky, Samuel Herman | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 0 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | ½ | |
| 6 | Byrne, Robert Eugene | 0 | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | 0 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | ½ | |
| 7 | Weinstein, Raymond Allen | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
| 8 | Bisguier, Arthur Bernard | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 0 | ½ | 1 | |
| 9 | Addison, William G | 0 | 0 | ½ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | |
| 10 | Mednis, Edmar John | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | ½ | ½ | ½ | |
| 11 | Steinmeyer, Robert H | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | |
| 12 | Byrne, Donald | 0 | 0 | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ |
Each cell shows the row player's recorded results against the column player. ● = same player.