The Piatigorsky Cup

Rather than federation or corporate sponsorship, both events were funded directly by the Piatigorskys, a level of personal patronage for chess remarkably rare in American sporting history. The 1963 event drew eight players from five countries; the 1966 event expanded to ten, with a $20,000 prize pool, substantial money for chess at the time.

Keres and reigning World Champion Petrosian tied for first at 8.5/14 in 1963, splitting the cup and the bulk of the $10,000 prize fund. A reigning World Champion failing to win outright against a strong but not overwhelming field is itself a small data point in Petrosian's long reputation as a player who ground out results rather than dominated fields outright.

The 1966 edition's standings read like a preview of the sport's next decade: Spassky first, Fischer second, Bent Larsen third, with Lajos Portisch, Wolfgang Unzicker, Petrosian, and Samuel Reshevsky rounding out the field. Six years before Fischer and Spassky would meet for the World Championship itself (see our full account of that 1972 match), this was an early, direct measurement of exactly where each man stood relative to the other.

Sustaining an elite invitational purely on the patronage of one wealthy couple was always going to be fragile compared to federation- or sponsor-backed events with institutional continuity. Only two editions were ever held, and the Piatigorsky Cup quietly stopped rather than folding amid any controversy, a quiet ending that may be part of why it is less remembered today than its field strength deserves.

Very few American tournaments in chess history have assembled a field this strong twice, featuring a reigning World Champion, a future World Champion, and several of the era's other elite players, entirely on the initiative of two private patrons who simply wanted to bring great chess to Los Angeles.