The Fixed Games...

The American Chess Congress of 1880, held at New York from Jan 6th to 26th. There was a $500 prize for 1st place. 

Before we get into the scandal itself, what is match fixing? Paying someone for a draw or win before a tournament game even begins in order to easily get a better result or to save energy is called Match fixing. Fixing in chess has been an issue for a long time now. Bobby Fischer

In the 1880 tournament, there were 10 players

Before the last round, Grundy, Mackenzie and Moehle were the three who had the best chance of winning, Grundy was leading the tournament with 12.5, while the other two were tailing him with 11.5. Cohnfeld, Congdon and Ware were doing extremely poor till that round, and had hardly won any games.

Remember the $500 prize money? Well nowadays, that would be equal to approximately $33000. Most chess players were not extremely rich back then and Grundy himself was very poor. 

Preston Ware and James Grundy are the main characters today. Near the end of the tournament, Grundy started playing poorly. He lost a game against Sellman and drew a winning game against Ryan. He even lost a game to Preston Ware. 

Preston Ware

At the end, Grundy and Mackenzie had to play a match against each other to decide who was the winner. The tournament was going to end, but before it could Preston Ware made an unusual claim and accusation.

Now this is a bold accusation to make. First of all, it was wrong on Ware's half to accept Grundy's offer. Second of all, there was no proof. Grundy said that this was all fake, and it was Ware trying to sabotage him. Grundy was a British chess master, and because this was an American event, Grundy said that Ware was trying to make it like an American would win. Most people did not harass or attack Grundy as he was poor and also did not play badly at anytime on purpose. 

After Ware's accusations, more investigations were done. People were rumoring that Ware had purposefully played badly against Mackenzie, because the two were good friends. John Ryan accused Grundy of fixing their games, and Delmar accused Mackenzie of fixing their games. Delmar also decided to accuse Grundy of fixing their games in the 3rd round. It was a huge disaster.

Two of these accusations seem legit to me (and multiple others). Delmar lost very quickly to Mackenzie in the last round, and was the reason Mackenzie was first. Grundy and Ware were just shuffling their pieces for most of their game (implying a draw would be coming soon) but then Grundy won.

Eugene Delmar, looking very annoyed in the picture.

It's still not known to this day if the accusations were true or false. But this was definitely a warning to all of the chess organizations out there. The punishment for fixing games become very severe after this tournament, and not many chess fixing accusations have happened since then.

I hope you found this story fascinating. I like reading and writing about cheating stories, but if you people have any better topics, be sure to tell me in the comments. Thanks, and bye for now.