Robert Byrne v Fischer, 1963: the resignation nobody expected

Bobby Fischer played this game against Robert Byrne in round 3 of the 1963/64 United States Championship in New York, on 18 December 1963. Fischer won the championship with 11 wins from 11 games and later included this game in My 60 Memorable Games. When Byrne resigned, the two grandmasters commenting for the spectators in a separate room still believed White was winning; Byrne wrote that the combination was so deep they had missed it.

The whole game

What Stockfish makes of it

We had Stockfish check every move.

14.Rfd1 and 15.Qc2: where White went wrong

Most commentators, Fischer among them, point to 14.Rfd1, which took the rook away from f2's defence, as White's mistake. Garry Kasparov alone named 15.Qc2 as the losing move. Stockfish sides with Kasparov: 14.Rfd1 was only a small inaccuracy, with Black a little better either way, but after 15.Qc2 Black is nearly four pawns better, where 15.Nf4 would have kept White only a pawn worse.

15...Nxf2!: the sacrifice

Fischer gave up a knight on f2, then the other knight on g2, to strip White's king. Stockfish confirms each step: 15...Nxf2, 16...Ng4+, 17...Nxe3, 19...d4 and 20...Bb7+ were each the only move that kept Black's advantage, and the next best moves would have given back much or all of it.

After 21...Qd7 White is a piece up, but Black threatens ...Qh3+, and Stockfish rates Black more than four pawns better. Byrne saw it and resigned. He wrote later that both commentators in the next room believed he had a won game.

How we checked

• The moves are from Mark Weeks's Chess for All Ages and a second published copy, which agree. No Wikipedia or ChessBase page prints the full score. One site continues the game to move 25, but those moves are analysis: the game ended at move 21. We replayed every move with python-chess: all are legal.
• The engine: Stockfish 16.1 checked every move at depth 22, and the key moments again at depth 26. "A pawn better" is Stockfish's measure of the position, not a count of material.
• The history and the named opinions are from Wikipedia's page on Robert Byrne), Mark Weeks's article (Fischer's and Kasparov's marks), ChessBase and the Boston Globe's obituary of Byrne.

More famous games

• The Immortal Game
• The Evergreen Game
• The Opera Game
• Zukertort v Blackburne, London 1883
• Lasker v Bauer, Amsterdam 1889
• Steinitz v von Bardeleben, Hastings 1895
• Rotlewi v Rubinstein, Łódź 1907
• Levitsky v Marshall, Breslau 1912
• Edward Lasker v Thomas, London 1912
• Lasker v Capablanca, St Petersburg 1914
• Capablanca v Marshall, New York 1918
• Adams v Torre, 1920
• The Immortal Zugzwang Game
• Réti v Alekhine, Baden-Baden 1925
• Euwe v Alekhine, 1935, game 26
• Botvinnik v Capablanca, AVRO 1938
• The Game of the Century
• Polugaevsky v Nezhmetdinov, Sochi 1958
• Tal v Smyslov, Candidates 1959
• Spassky v Bronstein, 1960
• Tal v Botvinnik, 1960, game 1
• Petrosian v Spassky, 1966, game 10
• Spassky v Petrosian, 1969, game 19
• Larsen v Spassky, Belgrade 1970
• Fischer v Spassky, 1972, game 6
• Karpov v Spassky, 1974, game 9
• Liu Wenzhe v Donner, 1978
• Karpov v Kasparov, 1985, game 16
• Kasparov v Karpov, Seville 1987, game 24
• Shirov v Judit Polgár, Buenos Aires 1994
• Topalov v Shirov, Linares 1998
• Kasparov's Immortal
• Kasparov v Kramnik, 2000, game 3
• Kramnik v Leko, Brissago 2004, game 14
• Anand's Immortal
• Anand v Carlsen, Chennai 2013, game 9
• Wei Yi v Bruzón, Danzhou 2015
• Carlsen v Karjakin, 2016, tiebreak game 4
• Carlsen v Nepomniachtchi, 2021, game 6

Ways to train

• Chess tactics trainer
• Chess blunder trainer
• Chess pawn structures
• Chess endgame trainer
• Positional chess training
• Analyse your chess games
• Master moves