Donald Byrne was one of the strongest American chess players during the 1950s and 1960s. He was an International Master who competed for his country on several occasions. His main career was as a university professor.
Chess career
Byrne won the U.S. Open Chess Championship in 1953 in Milwaukee and around that time he achieved the second-highest rating in the U.S., behind Samuel Reshevsky, against whom Byrne had a winning record. He was awarded the International Master title by FIDE in 1962, and played for or captained five U.S. Chess Olympiad teams between 1962 and 1972. In 1972, he led a team representing Pennsylvania State University to the US Amateur Team Championship in Philadelphia. The winning Penn State team consisted of Byrne, Dan Heisman, Steve Wexler, Bill Bickham, and Jim Joachim. Byrne's elder brother, GrandmasterRobert Byrne, was also a leading player of that time. Byrne was a great ambassador for American chess, seemingly on good terms with players from both sides of the Iron Curtain. At the 1966 Chess Olympiad in Havana, Cuba, Fischer, a member of the Worldwide Church of God, would not compete on Saturdays, and the tournament officials knew this, yet they scheduled his first game against a Soviet player on Saturday, leading to accusations and hot tempers by the U.S. and Soviet teams and the tournament officials. Byrne's diplomacy and communication skills and the respect that all the players had for his integrity were enough to get the game rescheduled with everyone saving face. The tournament proceeded without further incident. Host Fidel Castro gave Byrne a beautifully hand-carved chess set to thank him. Byrne was repeatedly asked by his teammates to be team captain, because of his interpersonal acumen and his generous, helpful nature. He routinely helped all the players analyze their games during adjournments, and he repeatedly succeeded in getting the temperamental Bobby Fischer to "relax and play the game", as he would tell Fischer when stress threatened his continued participation in tournaments. In the late 1950s Byrne contracted lupus, an auto-immune disease that led to the demise of his kidneys and made him allergic to the sun. He was known around campus for his very wide-brimmed brown Stetson hat. He would frequently tell stories about his chess exploits, often turning red from laughter. One story occurred in the 1956 Rosenwald tournament during the Game of the Century between Byrne and Bobby Fischer. Fischer was winning the game decisively, and Byrne asked some of the other players if it would be a good "tip of the hat" to Fischer's superb play to let young Fischer play the game to a checkmate instead of Byrne resigning, which would normally happen between masters. When the other players agreed, Byrne played the game out until Fischer checkmated him. Byrne added "You have to remember, Bobby wasn't yet Bobby Fischer at that time", meaning that the then 13-year-old Fischer was "only" a master, and not yet the 14-year-old wunderkind and top U.S. player he became the following year. Two other Byrne stories posted online: Fischer and the Border Patrol and The Hustler Gets Byrned. As a player Byrne popularized the...a5 line in the Yugoslav Attack in the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defence. Against 1. d4 he often preferred to play the Gruenfeld Defense. As White he preferred using the English Opening.
Other biography
Born in New York City, Byrne was a professor of English. He taught at Pennsylvania State University from 1961 until his death, having been invited there to teach and to coach the varsity chess team. Before his time at Penn State, he was a professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana. He was a competitor in the chess club run by Brooklyn chess coach and master John W. Collins. Collins wrote about his students in the book My Seven Chess Prodigies, which features both Byrne brothers, Donald and Robert, and the young Bobby Fischer. Byrne died in Philadelphia of complications arising from lupus. He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2003.
