Seventy years ago today, on 17 October 1956, a thirteen-year-old sat down at the Marshall Chess Club in New York and played a game people still replay. Weeks later, the journalist and master Hans Kmoch presented it in Chess Review as "The Game of the Century," and the name stuck.
The boy was Bobby Fischer. His opponent, Donald Byrne, was twenty-six, one of the top ten players in the United States, and the winner of the 1953 U.S. Open. The occasion was round eight of the Rosenwald Memorial Tournament, a twelve-player event that Samuel Reshevsky won with nine points from eleven games. Fischer, who had taken the U.S. Junior Championship that July, finished on 4½ — mid-table, well behind the winner. The one result nobody predicted was the game everyone remembered.
Playing Black, Fischer chose the Grünfeld Defense, the hypermodern idea that lets White build a large center and then attacks it. For ten moves the game stayed on known roads. Then Byrne gave his bishop a second outing instead of finishing his development, and Fischer struck: 11...Na4!, a knight that attacks the enemy queen and knight at the same time. Reuben Fine called it "a brilliant reply." Fred Reinfeld called it "one of the most magnificent moves ever made on a chessboard." Black won a pawn, and White's king, still on e1, felt the draft down the open e-file.
The real storm came on move 17. Byrne had just pulled his king out of the center — 16...Rfe8+ 17.Kf1 — and now Fischer's queen was under attack. Everyone expected him to save it. Instead he played 17...Be6!!, the move that made this game famous: he left his queen en prise. Byrne accepted the offer — 18.Bxb6 — and the board caught fire: 18...Bxc4+ 19.Kg1 Ne2+ 20.Kf1 Nxd4+ 21.Kg1 Ne2+ 22.Kf1 Nc3+ 23.Kg1 axb6, a chain of discovered checks with the knight gobbling the d4 pawn in mid-check. When the dust settled, Fischer had a rook, two bishops, and a pawn for his queen. Kmoch's verdict: the game "matches the finest on record in the history of chess prodigies."
White's queen took no further part. Fischer's pieces closed in — 24...Ra4!, and 25...Nxd1 winning the rook — and on move 41 came the finish: 41...Rc2 checkmate, the White king chased along the first rank to c1, the White queen watching from b8, stranded near the far edge of the board. Byrne, who knew he was lost, had played on so the boy could finish the game in style. The tournament committee, which included Kmoch himself, gave Fischer a special prize for the most meritorious game of the event. Asked how he had done it, Fischer shrugged: "I just made the moves I thought were best. I was just lucky."
The game still carries lessons, the ones John Nunn, John Emms, and Graham Burgess point to. Do not move a developed piece twice while the rest of your army stays home — Byrne's 11th move was the crack Fischer needed. And a sacrifice works when the enemy king is exposed: White never castled, and the central files stayed open, which is what made giving up a queen sound play rather than madness. The deepest point is simpler still: material is a means, not an end. The queen is the strongest piece on the board, but one queen cannot defend a king that its own pieces have deserted.
Fischer later left this game out of My 60 Memorable Games — the book's selection begins in 1957, and this belongs to 1956 — but no list of famous games could omit it. Seventy years on, it still answers the question of what a queen sacrifice buys: every other piece, working together.