A blog post dedicated to the later games of the outstanding Soviet grandmaster, Lev Abramovich Polugaevsky (1934-1995), with his contemporary annotations from the Soviet chess press. The early and middle years of Polugaevsky’s career are well covered by two magnificent books, published in English in the 1980s by Pergamon Press.  The first, which was a…

A blog post featuring a translation of Mikhail Gurevich’s annotations to his spectacular victory over Julian Hodgson from the 1989 European Team Championship, with some personal recollections from the event. The European Team Championship held in Haifa in 1989 was the first such event for six years, and the first to be held on the…

Mikhail Tal took part in the 1986 edition of the ‘Berliner Sommer’, an event which was one of the largest ‘opens’ in Europe.  Despite his relative unfamiliarity with Swiss systems, and despite the difficult playing conditions, he succeeded in taking 1st place (on tie-break).  He later wrote a report on the event for the Soviet…

A blog post dedicated to the Tal v. Portisch Candidates’ Quarter-final of 1965, featuring translations of Tal’s annotations to all eight games of the match, plus some background to the event. In 1965, for the first time the FIDE Candidates’ competition took the form of a series of knock-out matches rather than an all-play-all match-tournament…