Born in Ungvár, Ung County, Carpathian Ruthenia, Austria-Hungary (now Uzhhorod, Ukraine), Lipschütz emigrated to New York City in 1880 at the age of seventeen.

In 1885 he won the championship of the New York Chess Club, and the next year he took part in the international tournament held in London, where he came sixth, including wins over Johannes Zukertort and George Henry Mackenzie.

[5] David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld write in The Oxford Companion to Chess that Lipschütz's appendix "helped to make this one of the standard opening books of the time".

[6] William Ewart Napier recalled Lipschütz as a "frail little man, with a gentlemanly mien and manners and an extravagantly long, pointed nose—the Cyrano of Chess".

[8] Afflicted by tuberculosis, Lipschütz left New York several times for health reasons, principally staying in Santa Fe (1893), Los Angeles (1893–95) and Florida (1904).