A short blog post featuring a Bronstein’s translated annotations to his game v. Korchnoi from the tournament at Hastings, 1976, and the background to this encounter. The traditional Hastings tournament at the end of 1975 took place at the town’s White Rock Pavilion, from 29th December 1975 until the 15th January 1976. It was normal…
Lev Psakhis’s report on the tournament at Troon (Scotland) in 1984, translated from ’64’, and including detailed annotations to his dramatic final-round game v. Craig Pritchett (available to download in .PDF format). At the Press Centre for the World Chess Championship in Moscow, September 1984. Left to right: Semyon Palatnik, Lev Psakhis, Sergei Dolmatov, Mark…
Among the 22 participants in the final of the 39th USSR Championship (Leningrad, 1971) were Smyslov, Tal, Karpov, Bronstein, Polugaevsky, Geller and Stein. Taking part in such distinguished company for the first time, the master from Belarus, Albert Kapengut, took 10th place. This blog post features Kapengut’s annotations to his win over Stein, together with some biographical…
A short blog post featuring World Champion Mikhail Tal’s annotations to his entertaining draw against Karl Robatsch, from the preliminaries of the 14th Olympiad. This game was played in the 5th round of the preliminaries, on 21st October 1960. The USSR and Austria were drawn in Preliminary Group 2. The top three teams would qualify for the…
A short blog post, featuring Bronstein’s annotations to his striking victory v. Lubosh Kavalek at the Asztalos Memorial tournament in Szombathely (Hungary), 1966. Lubosh Kavalek (left) shakes hands with David Bronstein at the Amsterdam IBM tournament, July 1968; on the right is grandmaster Aleksandr Kotov (photo source: Dutch National Archives). In July 1966 in Szombathely,…
A short blog post featuring annotations to Lombardy’s famous victory over Spassky at the 1960 Student Olympiad, and some background to the circumstances of the event. The first official World Student Team Championship (an event that became popularly known as the ‘Student Olympiad’) was held in Oslo in 1954. It became an annual event –…
During the years 1972-1974, Mikhail Tal famously embarked on two very long series of unbeaten games, which are among the longest ever recorded. However, between these two unbeaten runs he suffered something of a collapse in form, in a period that crucially included the FIDE Interzonal Tournament held in Leningrad. As so often in Tal’s…
In September of 1968, Bobby Fischer convincingly won the international tournament held in the Slavonian town of Vinkovci (pronounced: Vinkovtsi), in what was then Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, and is today the independent state of Croatia. Fischer finished on 11/13 (+9, -0, =4), two clear points ahead of Milan Matulović and Florin Gheorghiu, who…
Vladimir Savon (1940-2005) is an unfamiliar name among many chess fans today. Yet, at the peak of his strength in the early 1970s, he proved more than a match for many of the best players of the day. His greatest success was undoubtedly his first place, by a point-and-a-half, in the 39th USSR-ch in Leningrad,…
“The blue bird, soaring in the clouds…” The 1960 victory of Boris Spassky victory against David Bronstein, in which he sacrificed a rook for the sake of an attack on the enemy king, is celebrated as one of the most famous chess games of all time; indeed, it featured in the 1963 James Bond film…
A short blog post featuring Spassky’s annotations to two of his games from the Mar del Plata tournament of 1960, translated from the original Russian. (.PDF files of the annotations are available to download.) The above photo (obtained from the website of Friðrik Ólafsson) shows the participants in the Mar del Plata tournament. Fischer is…
In the summer of 1959 Mikhail Tal was at the height of his powers. He had just taken 1st place in the international tournament at Zürich, ahead of Gligorić, Fischer and Keres, and in September he would dominate the Candidates’ Tournament held in the Yugoslav cities of Bled, Zagreb and Belgrade, gaining the right to…
