diagonal: Those were the days, Malcolm Pein, today well-respected tournament director, in the then annually Lugano Open Series.Lone Pine in the '70ies (until 1981) and Lugano in the '80ies can be regarded as the predcessors of Gibraltar today.
Once we got to Lugano, there were always a whole bunch of young Brits such as Miles, and Nunn, Short, Plaskett, Flear, Pein, King, Conquest, Hebden, Hodgson, or Norwood, gone to investment banking later (Stean already retired from chess in 1982, Keene played only occasionally till the mid-eighties, I can't remember seen them in Lugano).
The Lugano Open in March 1984 was won by Gyula Sax (R.I.P.) with strong 8/9 points, a full point ahead of John Nunn, followed by - among many others - Florin Gheorghiu (a very regular Open competitor), Yasser Seirawan (Lugano winner in 1983 & 1987), Vlastimil Hort (no. 10 ELO in January 1984), Boris Spasski, Viktor Korchnoi (Lugano winner in 1982, 1986 and in 1989, the last edition of this Open scacchistico internazionale di Lugano), Eugenio Torre, Rudolf Teschner (born 1922, died 2006), Daniel King (today well-respected author, broadcaster and coach), Edmar Mednis (born 1937, died 2002), Jay Whitehead (R.I.P.), John Fedorowicz, Werner Hug (the Swiss who was Junior World Champion from 1971 but never got the GM title), Malcolm Pein as mentioned, Levente Lengyel (born 1933), Glenn Flear, young Klaus Bischoff, and many others. In total there were 196 participators in the main section and 192 players in the general section.
Cvitan and Kudrin made a GM norm. Best woman was stunning Tatjana Lematschko with 6.5 / 9 points, beating John Nunn!
Watch this space for some good Lugano 1984 impressions:
<<http://nezhmet.wordpress.com/catego...>>
Other super-strong guests at Lugano in the 1980s apart from the mentioned three-times winner Korchnoi (who made the Lugano Open as frequent headliner in the eighties so popular), Spasski (a true gentleman who doesn't hesitate to compete and contribute in an Open as former World Champion), twice-winner Seirawan, Sax, Short, Nunn, Miles, Hort, Torre, were among others - Timman, Hübner, Larsen, Ftacnik (close winner in 1988 with seven players shared first, among them Korchnoi as third after tie-break), Georgiev, Nikolic, I. Sokolv, Sosonko (winner of the very first edition in 1976), Böhm, Gutman, Tukamakov, Psakhis, Balaschov, Spraggett, Rogers, Nogueiras, Ocampos, Gulko, Browne, De Firmian, Henley, Benjamin, Dlugy, Rogers, first Italian Grandmaster Mariotti (winner in 1979), Tatai, Tóth (twice-winner in the earlier years), Godena, Ralf Hess (who won as an amateur in 1978), rising youngsters as Piket, Lautier, always mixed with highly reputated oldies such as Gligoric, Szabo, Reshevsky!, mentioned Mednis, and ladies, eg. Pia (with brother Dan also playing) Cramling, Alisa Maric (beating Anand), Maja Chiburdanidze, mentioned Tatjana Lematschko; and as a special highlight Anatoly Karpov (for a separate blitz tournament in 1988, which he won; he did not want to take part in the Open format).
Those were the days, and as disclaimer: Malcolm Pein's Opus Magnum at Lugano, in March 1988 against then reigning Junior World Champion 1987, a win versus - guess who - Vishy Anand: <<M Pein vs Anand, 1989>> (note: the correct year is 1988, not 1989).
Kibitzing
sac: 15.Nxd5
