Marshall-Showalter Match, 1909
Lexington, KY
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2
Marshall 1 ½ 1 1 0 ½ ½ 1 1 1 0 1 7 (w/3 draws)
Showalter 0 ½ 0 0 1 ½ ½ 0 0 0 1 0 2 (w/3 draws)
Showalter was White in the odd numbered games. The match was
to go to the first to win 7 games.
When Walter Penn Shipley was asked to mediate the dispute surrounding
the disposition of the US title after the death of Harry Nelson Pillsbury
(see the notes to the Capablanca-Marshall match),
he awarded the title to the last living person to have held it: Jackson Whipps Showalter,
a man whom the title had reverted to on more than one previous occasion.
Since Shipley had ruled that Capablanca (the winner of the Capablanca-Marshall match)
could not challenge for the title until he became a US Citizen, Marshall beat him to the
punch by going to Kentucky, dragging Showalter out of retirement, and issuing his own
challenge.
After winning the title in this match, Marshall held it for 26 years, defending it
only once during that time, before voluntarily relinquishing it in 1935, to allow the
present series of US Championship tournaments to begin.
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