Statting later on Wednesday night on eBay, a complete set of 1966-67
US Championship bulletins. Here is the eBay auction ad. Look at the
statement from Rd 3:
"There have been several complaints by more than one player that the
chess boards are not lighted well enough. Therefore, spectators are
requested to have lighted matches in their possession at all times
while the games are in progress. Thank you."

Can you imagine this now???
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Original '66-'67 US Championship Bulletins 1966-67 U.S. Chess
Championship Bulletins
Bobby Fischer was undefeated with 9½ - 1½, clear first by 2 pts

Click to enlarge the scan

When I was looking through this collection of chess material, I was
pretty stunned to see this item. An original 1966-67 complete set of
bulletins from the U.S. Championship!
These are the old-fashioned kind of copies, before there were copy
machines and Kinko's to mass-produce thousands of bulletins. The
bulletins were hand set and hand done on a typewriter as word
processors and computers for daily office use were just a glint in
someone's eye in 1966. The first and last pages are presented to the
left.

The pages are in really good shape and appear to have been stored well
over the years. They are slightly tinged with the light yellow-brown
of aging paper, paper which is still stiff and responsive. Remember
the old feeling of fresh mimeographed copies? Warm to the touch and
that aroma of ink that was close a drug experience? The smell is gone,
it didn't last more than an hour in the first place, but you can
envision being back in time and smelling them hot off the presses. The
pages are all loose and each has been 3-hole punched sometime in the
past for storage in a notebook.

Bobby Fischer won with 9½ - 1½, a full 2 points over Larry Evans. If I
believe correctly, this was the last time that Fischer participated in
the US Championship.

I don't how many of these type bulletins could be in existence.
Probably a few hundred were made and who knows how many survived. The
USCF produced the bulletins, with Burt Hochburg (long-time Chess Life
editor) and analysis by Senior Master Michael Valvo. A few games each
round were annotated by Valvo and comments and reactions from the
participants are also included. On page 3 of Bulletin 2, Pal Benko
gives analysis of his loss to Fischer in Rd.1 during which he pointed
out an error in Fischer's combination and what he could have done
better - Wow! Original stuff like this has to be rare!

Page 3 of Bulletin 3 has one of the more bizarre comments I have ever
heard at a tournament:

"There have been several complaints by more than one player that the
chess boards are not lighted well enough. Therefore, spectators are
requested to have lighted matches in their possession at all times
while the games are in progress. Thank you."


What!!?? Is this a rock-concert or what? Can you imagine spectators
using matches to help the players see better?? How strange!!

Round 3 Bulletin also describes 3 time forfeits that rounds which had
the director frantically trying to keep up with happenings. Round 4
bulletin has Fischer showing a mistake in his adjourned Rd.3 game with
Rossolimo.

Just a classic piece of Chess Americana which could be unique after 38
years. Almost don't want to sell this and will not be sad if it
doesn't sell.


Michael Atkins

how much do you want for it?