Fischer's Game of the Century: did the engine agree?

In May 2026 Faustino Oro earned his third grandmaster norm at 12 years, 6 months and 26 days, making him the second-youngest player ever to qualify for the title, behind Abhimanyu Mishra, who was 12 years, 4 months and 25 days. Bobby Fischer was 13 when he played Donald Byrne at the Marshall Chess Club in New York on 17 October 1956, in the Rosenwald Trophy tournament.

Byrne was one of the leading American masters, a US Open champion in 1953. Hans Kmoch named the game the Game of the Century in Chess Review, writing that it matched the finest on record in the history of chess prodigies.

The evaluation is level after ten moves. Then 11.Bg5 drops White from 51% to 32%. Wikipedia notes that Byrne errs by not completing his development and that sources suggest 11.Be2; the engine's choice is the same. For the next six moves White stays at about one chance in three.

Byrne (White)

90.1%

Fischer (Black)

97.9%

Fischer's 97.9% comes from 41 moves, none graded below excellent, three of them great. Byrne's 90.1% includes two inaccuracies and three mistakes.

At depth 24 the engine has 17...Be6 at about +2 for Black. Its next two choices, 17...Nb5 and 17...Nb1, are about a pawn worse for him: a swing of roughly three pawns between the right move and the next best.

The queen cannot be refused cheaply either. White's best is 18.Qxc3, declining the queen, and that still leaves him about two pawns down, 32% to win. 18.Bxb6, which takes it, costs another 20.5 points. Black is then +5.9, about 90%.

Our grader gives a move brilliant only if it is the only good move, it is not a simple recapture, and it gives material away. It judges the last part by playing out the captures on the square the piece lands on. The bishop on e6 can be traded there, so it does not look like a sacrifice. The queen that Fischer is really offering was already attacked before the move.

So 17...Be6 gets great. The label is not wrong about the move; the rule has a blind spot: a sacrifice made by leaving something en prise is invisible to a test that only looks at where the piece goes.

How this was measured: the same Stockfish 18 build this site's analyser runs, at depth 16 on every move and depth 24 on the 24 moves that lost the most ground. Scores are in pawns from White's side. Another engine, depth or computer will move individual numbers a little; the shape of the game stays the same.