A blog post featuring translations of annotations (by Smyslov, Bronstein, Keres, Kotov, Averbakh, Flohr, Simagin & Szabó) to the games of the 1949 Budapest-Moscow match-tournament, with some background information on the event. Almost 70 years ago, during March and April of 1949, a match-tournament between teams representing the Soviet and Hungarian capitals took place. The…
A short blog post featuring Korchnoi’s annotations to his decisive game v. Bent Larsen in the Palma de Mallorca international tournament of 1968, and some brief background to the tournament. Exactly half a century ago the great international tournament at Palma de Mallorca had just finished. An 18-player round robin, it was the fourth in…
The most famous match of them all, the 1972 clash between World Champion Boris Spassky and Challenger Bobby Fischer in Reykjavík, was of course closely followed in the contemporary Soviet press. Fischer and Spassky in play in Reykjavík, with arbiter Lothar Schmid in the centre of the photo. (Source: Friðrik Ólafsson, via http://www.skakmyndir.com.) In the…
A blog post featuring a translation of the report on the match by Igor Bondarevsky’s (Boris Spassky’s trainer and second) from ‘Chess in the USSR’, including his annotations to all eight games of the match. Boris Spassky at the FIDE Interzonal tournament in Amsterdam, 24th May 1964. (Photo credit: P. van Zoest, ANP, via geheugenvannederland.nl.)…
One of the delights of chess history is that there is so much waiting to be discovered. Earlier today, opening at random the pages of an old issue of the Soviet weekly ‘64‘, my attention fell to an article devoted to the game Tal v. Kholmov, from the 36th USSR Championship final (Alma Ata, 1968/69)…
A blog post on the Zonal Tournament held in Moscow in early 1964, which featured Spassky, Bronstein, Stein, Geller, Korchnoi, Kholmov and Suetin, with translated annotations to three outstanding games from the event and some detail on the controversial circumstances surrounding it. The opening pages of the report on the Moscow Zonal by I. Z.…
A short blog post featuring annotations to the game Fischer v. Taimanov, by Soviet grandmaster Evgeny Vasiukov (who was Taimanov’s second at the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal), and some background to the game. Bobby Fischer at the Candidates’ final match v. Tigran Petrosian, Buenos Aires 1971 (Photo credit: La Nación.) By the early 1970s, Bobby…
Karpov and Korchnoi in play in Baguio. (Photo credit: unknown.) Ex-World Champion Mikhail Tal was present in Baguio City during the 1978 World Championship match as part of the Soviet delegation, and as special correspondent for the weekly newspaper ‘64‘. His annotations to the games of the match present a valuable contemporary record of the…
A short blog post featuring translations of Efim Geller’s contemporary annotations to two key games in the theory of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. (In progress: the game Psakhis v. Geller, Yerevan Zonal Tournament 1982) In his memorable profile of Efim Geller in Russian Silhouettes, Genna Sosonko relates the following: At the Olympiad in Lucerne in 1982…
A blog post featuring Mikhail Tal’s annotations to the games of the Korchnoi-Geller Candidates’ semi-final of 1971, with some additional background to the match. BACKGROUND The Quarter-finals of the FIDE Candidates’ matches for the 1970-72 World Championship cycle took place in the spring of 1971. In Vancouver, Bobby Fischer (USA) was to face Mark Taimanov…
A blog post featuring annotations to five of Tal’s victories (v. Spassky – twice!, Larsen, Hübner & Portisch) from the ‘Tournament of Stars’ (Montréal, 1979), together with some background on the tournament. Mikhail Tal in play at the 46th USSR Championship, Tbilisi, December 1978 (Photo: TASS) Mikhail Tal’s career famously featured many ups and downs…
INTRODUCTION A short blog post about a classic book by two famous Soviet masters, Grigory Levenfish and Pyotr Romanovsky, on one of the most celebrated chess matches of all time. Some brief biographical details on Romanovsky are also presented. Among the oldest and most prized books in my collection is Levenfish & Romanovsky’s survey of…
