The Times, Shreveport, Louisiana, Friday, September 12, 1958
Brilliant Success
U.S. Chess Whiz, 15, Is Made Grand Master
Portoroz, Yugoslavia, Sept. 11 (AP)—Bobby Fischer of Brooklyn, 15-year-old United States chess champion, became a chess grand master today, the youngest ever to hold this title in chess history.
Fischer placed fifth at the interzonal chess tournament here played in framework of world championship competition and thus automatically received the title of grand master.
This marked a brilliant success for Fischer, who came to Europe to compete for the first time in his life at an international chess championship tournament.
He qualified also for the next year's tournament of candidates, the winner of which plays for the world championship with present world champion Soviet grand master Mikhail Botvinnik in 1960.
The young American grand master of the interzonal chess tournament played very successfully. He drew against all Soviet grand masters represented here. From 20 possible points he collected 12 which in the tough competition of best world chess players is considered an extremely good result.
Hungarian refugee Paul Benko, a member of the U.S. Chess Federation, shares third with Soviet Grand Master Tigran Petrosyan. Benko, too, became a grand master.
Benko left Hungary after 1956 in his homeland. Hungarian refugees contributed to enable him to come to Portoroz. He, too, will enter the tournament of candidates.
Both Fischer and Benko will be the strongest entries for the candidates tournament from the West. Their likely opponents will be Paul Keres and Vasili Smyslov, who placed first and second at the last candidates tournament and the first to sixth placed at Portoroz, among them Soviet grand masters Mikhail Talj and Tigran Petrosyan, and Yugoslav grand master Svetozar Gligoric. The eighth entry has not yet been decided and depends on the outcome of the tournament here, which will end tonight.
