Courier-Post Camden, New Jersey Wednesday, August 23, 1961
Reshevsky-Fischer Match Ends in Fiasco
What started out as the most interesting chess match to be held in the United States in many years has ended in a sorry fiasco.
The match was between America's two foremost grandmasters—Samuel Reshevsky, 49, long recognized as champion of the Western world and never defeated in a match, and 18-year-old Bobby Fischer, four-time consecutive U.S. champion.
The match was scheduled for 16 games for a purse of about $8,000, the winner getting 65 per cent and the lost 35. The first four games were played in New York starting July 16. The players then moved to Los Angeles for the next eight. The final four were scheduled for New York.
For 11 games the match was everything expected—hard fought and thrilling. At that point the two players were tied with 5½ points each. Each player had won two games, and the others were drawn.
Inexplicably, the 12th game, last to be played in Los Angeles, was scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 12. The entire chess world knows that Reshevsky, a devout Orthodox Jew, refuses to play on the Jewish Sabbath and always has. But apparently the sponsoring American Chess Foundation overlooked this fact or for some mysterious reason chose to ignore it, until Reshevsky asked that the game be rescheduled.
Reshevsky says that he and Fischer, before going to Los Angeles, had an agreement to play the 12th game on Sunday instead of Saturday. But somehow there was a mix-up as to the time on Sunday and Fischer refused to play at 11 a.m., the hour to which the game was finally shifted. Fischer now says the game could have been played the previous evening, after the conclusion of the Jewish Sabbath.
The upshot was that the officials forfeited the 12th game to Reshevsky. Fischer then refused to appear for the 13th game, when competition was resumed in New York, and the sponsors forfeited the match to his opponent. They also are threatening Bobby with a damage suit for non-compliance with the terms of his contract.
American chess thus receives another black eye, which can hardly be blamed on either Fischer or Reshevsky under the circumstances. It is a major tragedy that the American Chess Foundation, which has done so much for the game, should seem to have handled the situation so ineptly.
CORRECTION: The schedule was changed twice.
- Changed from Saturday night to Sunday at 1:30 P.M. to which Bobby Fischer consented.
- Changed from 1:30 P.M. Sunday to 11 A.M. Sunday, by Referee Irving Rivise, to accommodate his own trip to San Francisco for the U.S. Open which opened the following day, Monday.
Young Fischer protested that the schedule should be returned to the originally scheduled time of 1:30 P.M. This clarification is documented in the August 14, 1961 Los Angeles Times “Chess Champ Forfeits By Failing to Appear”
