Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Robert Eugene Byrne (born April 20, 1928 in New York City) is a leading American chess player, a Grandmaster, and a chess author. He won the U.S. Championship in 1972, and was a World Chess Championship Candidate in 1974. Byrne represented the United States nine times in Chess Olympiads from 1952 to 1976 and won seven medals. He was the chess columnist from 1972 to 2006 for the New York Times, which ran his final column (a recounting of his 1952 victory over David Bronstein) on November 12, 2006.