'Out of the land of sunshine and spaghetti has suddenly appeared the chessworld's newest international grandmaster - Sergio Mariotti.

'This twenty-eight year old Italian chess star's achievement is all the more remarkable when you look at his very limited experience of international chess. Outside Italy, at grandmaster level, Mariotti has only played in a mainly-for-young-masters contest in Yugoslavia, a world championship zonal in Portugal, a small Spanish tournament and a couple of Olympiads. At home, his only really top-class practice was at Venice 1971 where his performance, in conjunction with his outstanding score on board one for Italy at the Nice Olympiads, has already earned him the GM title!

'Sergio's main source of practice has come from playing in lots of Swiss System tournaments which make up a heavy percentage of Italy's busy chess calendar.

'He learned the moves as a teenager in his home town of Florence and had the old maestro Castaldi for a chess teacher. Mariotti has a real inborn talent for chess and developed his great strength just by playing and playing. Then in 1966 he had his first major success when he won the Italian Junior Championship. He has always relied on his natural ability and never owned many chess books nor felt very much inclined to study the game that way. At the chessboard Mariotti's mind works like a souped-up electronic calculator, rattling off razzle-dazzle variations one after the other at lightning speed.

[...]

'And indeed it was the Zonal at Praia da Rocha in Portugal which first rocketed Mariotti to world fame, thanks to a splendid victory over grandmaster Gligoric with an incredible six-pawn attack against the Yugoslav's favourite King's Indian. This Mariotti masterpiece was published in columns and magazines around the world...'