Game of the Century

The Game of the Century is Donald Byrne versus Bobby Fischer, played in the 1956 Lessing J. Rosenwald tournament in New York. Fischer was thirteen years old and had Black. Chess writer and master Hans Kmoch popularized the name after the game, which quickly became one of the first major public demonstrations of Fischer's talent.

The game is remembered above all for a combination in which Fischer allows his queen to be captured. A combination is a concrete sequence of moves, usually driven by immediate threats such as checks, captures, or mate, with a calculable goal. Fischer does not give up the queen merely for spectacle. After White accepts the sacrifice, Black's bishop captures another bishop with check instead of taking White's queen. Fischer keeps the initiative, gains substantial material over the following moves, and coordinates his remaining pieces into a decisive attack that eventually ends in checkmate.

It is often compared with the Immortal Game because both feature spectacular combinations. It should not, however, be confused with Reykjavík 1972, widely called the “Match of the Century”: that was Fischer's World Championship match against Spassky sixteen years later.