| San Antonio (1972) |
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In 1972, while the world's gaze was fixed on Iceland, a company in America had plans to generate publicity for itself through the chess world. Church's Fried Chicken, a restaurant chain in the United States, organized an international tournament to be held in San Antonio, Texas. European and Soviet grandmasters were pitted against grandmasters and masters from the Americas in a round robin format. The sixteen participants were (in order of Elo rating): Tigran Petrosian (2645), Lajos Portisch (2640), Anatoli Karpov (2630), Bent Larsen (2625), Vlastimil Hort (2600), Paul Keres (2600), Svetozar Gligoric (2575), Henrique Mecking (2570), Larry Evans (2545), Walter Shawn Browne (2530), Donald Byrne (2470), Julio Kaplan (2470), Duncan Suttles (2470), Dr. Anthony Saidy (2425), Ken Smith (2395), and Mario Campos Lopez (2200). The tournament ended with the top three seeds sharing first place. Video: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/U... San Antonio, Texas USA, 19 November - 11 December 1972 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
01 Portisch * ½ 1 0 1 1 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 1 10.5
02 Petrosian ½ * ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 10.5
03 Karpov 0 ½ * 1 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 10.5
04 Gligoric 1 0 0 * ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 10.0
05 Keres 0 ½ ½ ½ * 1 ½ 1 1 1 0 ½ ½ 1 1 ½ 9.5
06 Hort 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 * ½ 1 0 ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 1 9.0
07 Suttles ½ ½ 0 0 ½ ½ * ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 1 9.0
08 Mecking ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ * 1 ½ ½ 1 1 1 ½ 1 8.5
09 Larsen 0 0 ½ ½ 0 1 ½ 0 * 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 8.5
10 Byrne ½ ½ 0 0 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 * 1 0 ½ 1 1 1 7.0
11 Evans ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 0 ½ 0 0 * ½ 0 ½ ½ 1 6.5
12 Browne ½ ½ 0 0 ½ 0 ½ 0 1 1 ½ * 1 0 0 1 6.5
13 Kaplan 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 0 0 0 ½ 1 0 * 1 ½ 0 5.0
14 Campos Lopez ½ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ½ 1 0 * 1 ½ 3.5
15 Saidy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ½ 0 0 ½ 1 ½ 0 * 1 3.5
16 Smith 0 0 0 0 ½ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 ½ 0 * 2.0
Original collection: Game Collection: San Antonio 1972 User: suenteus po 147.
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| page 1 of 5; games 1-25 of 120 |
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| Game |
| Result | Moves |
Year | Event/Locale | Opening |
| 1. Browne vs Evans |
| ½-½ | 25 | 1972 | San Antonio | A43 Old Benoni |
| 2. Keres vs Hort |
 | 1-0 | 60 | 1972 | San Antonio | E14 Queen's Indian |
| 3. A Saidy vs Karpov |
 | 0-1 | 52 | 1972 | San Antonio | A07 King's Indian Attack |
| 4. Mecking vs J Kaplan |
| 1-0 | 31 | 1972 | San Antonio | B44 Sicilian |
| 5. D Byrne vs Petrosian |
| ½-½ | 22 | 1972 | San Antonio | A00 Uncommon Opening |
| 6. M Campos Lopez vs Portisch |
| ½-½ | 33 | 1972 | San Antonio | B42 Sicilian, Kan |
| 7. Suttles vs Gligoric |
| 0-1 | 48 | 1972 | San Antonio | E81 King's Indian, Samisch |
| 8. Larsen vs K Smith |
| 1-0 | 24 | 1972 | San Antonio | D11 Queen's Gambit Declined Slav |
| 9. Karpov vs Browne |
| 1-0 | 59 | 1972 | San Antonio | A30 English, Symmetrical |
| 10. Hort vs Petrosian |
| ½-½ | 13 | 1972 | San Antonio | B52 Sicilian, Canal-Sokolsky (Rossolimo) Attack |
| 11. Keres vs Mecking |
| 1-0 | 28 | 1972 | San Antonio | D32 Queen's Gambit Declined, Tarrasch |
| 12. Portisch vs Suttles |
| ½-½ | 40 | 1972 | San Antonio | B08 Pirc, Classical |
| 13. Evans vs Larsen |
| 0-1 | 43 | 1972 | San Antonio | A14 English |
| 14. Gligoric vs D Byrne |
| 1-0 | 39 | 1972 | San Antonio | D91 Grunfeld, 5.Bg5 |
| 15. J Kaplan vs A Saidy |
| ½-½ | 69 | 1972 | San Antonio | B92 Sicilian, Najdorf, Opocensky Variation |
| 16. K Smith vs M Campos Lopez |
| ½-½ | 64 | 1972 | San Antonio | C02 French, Advance |
| 17. Browne vs J Kaplan |
| 1-0 | 24 | 1972 | San Antonio | B54 Sicilian |
| 18. Mecking vs Hort |
| 0-1 | 87 | 1972 | San Antonio | B68 Sicilian, Richter-Rauzer Attack, 7...a6 Defense, 9...Be7 |
| 19. A Saidy vs Keres |
| 0-1 | 55 | 1972 | San Antonio | D02 Queen's Pawn Game |
| 20. Petrosian vs Gligoric |
| 1-0 | 35 | 1972 | San Antonio | E81 King's Indian, Samisch |
| 21. D Byrne vs Portisch |
| ½-½ | 32 | 1972 | San Antonio | A22 English |
| 22. Suttles vs K Smith |
| 1-0 | 49 | 1972 | San Antonio | A07 King's Indian Attack |
| 23. M Campos Lopez vs Evans |
| ½-½ | 41 | 1972 | San Antonio | B96 Sicilian, Najdorf |
| 24. Larsen vs Karpov |
| ½-½ | 33 | 1972 | San Antonio | E17 Queen's Indian |
| 25. Hort vs Gligoric |
| ½-½ | 23 | 1972 | San Antonio | E92 King's Indian |
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| page 1 of 5; games 1-25 of 120 |
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< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 3 OF 3 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
| Mar-20-22 | | Z free or die: Groan! |
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Mar-20-22
 | | MissScarlett: Paul, why are you limping?
I've got Estonia in my shoe. |
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| Mar-20-22 | | Z free or die: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ll... |
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| Mar-21-22 | | Granny O Doul: <Olavi: Among professionals in the old days it was agreed that the more the prizes are weighted in favour of the first prize, the more likely one gets lots of ultra short draws, particularly in the last rounds of Opens. This is a given, if you think about it just a little, but somehow organizers and sponsors never seemed to understand.> I still don't understand, after much thought. I think this should have the opposite effect. |
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Mar-21-22
 | | Check It Out: <Granny> Thats what I would think as well. |
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| Mar-22-22 | | Olavi: <Check It Out: <Granny> > You may think otherwise if you have no guaranteed income at all. For lower level professionals, travelling from one open to another, it was not so unusual to have to make a pragmatic choice. I know an aspiring chess player who took a short draw in Spain to be sure of a train ticket back home to Sweden. I try to remember to give the Nunn quote re the 1991 Adams game. |
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Mar-22-22
 | | perfidious: It is one thing for the likes of Luis Rentero to decry the tendency towards short draws at top level and force the likes of Spassky to sign an agreement to play chess, yet quite another to live in the real world where one must earn one's way. The pragmatism alluded to by <Olavi> rears its head in tournament poker: there has long been a stigma attached to simply making the prize list, as opposed to playing to win the event, yet if the benefits of min-cashing are ignored, that would tend to have a disastrous effect on one's bottom line. Case in point: a few months back at the WSOP, I played a $2500 event in which the min-cash was $4k. An Israeli pro was at my table and had a very short stack and no real chance of winning the event, so he played super-safe poker as the money bubble approached, rather than his trademark aggro he had displayed all day--we had got into several tussles. This bore fruit, as he went out at the beginning of the second day, $4000 to the good. |
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| Mar-22-22 | | Olavi: Yes, even Nunn wrote in 1991 (near the world top for ten years) that you have to think what the odds are. Because the chesspleyer does rely on his prizemoney to pay his phonebill and polltax. When the first prize is very big in proportion to the other prizes, it makes sense to take a sure second share of it, instead of taking a gamble. I'd add that most chess players don't play chess to make money, they'd have chosen another profession is such was their ambition. They play chess to play chess. |
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Mar-22-22
 | | offramp: <Olavi:...I'd add that most chess players don't play chess to make money, they'd have chosen another profession is such was their ambition. They play chess to play chess.> Perhaps Keres's corrective surgery on his feet may have been connected to Keres changing his profession. Keres could have given up chess and become a referee in football, with the legs of Oscar Pistorius. |
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Nov-23-22
 | | Eggman: I love Fischer's "I've hardly heard of him" comment about Karpov, who was ranked =7 in the world at the time, and who on the following list, 7 months later (ratings were published just once a year at the time), would be ranked =2, with Tal. |
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Nov-23-22
| | perfidious: Had never heard of Fischer mentioning Karpov in that way, the more so as he was known to have an omnivorous appetite for chess books and journals--even if, as has been stated, he began taking less interest after Reykjavik, this strikes me as being either a flip remark, or as foolish as such early proclamations as his 'Bust to the King's Gambit'. |
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| Nov-24-22 | | Petrosianic: Assuming Fischer actually said it, the time at which he said it might be indicative of how far distanced he was from chess itself at the time.
When Fischer was still involved with chess, he knew the most incredible minutiae. There's a story about how he once tried to discuss the Bykova-Zvorykina match with some of the Soviet players, and they didn't know a thing about it. Tal said something to the effect of "We're so busy with our own games, who has times to follow the women's championship?" But after winning the title, Fischer got completely away from chess for a while, and never could get back to the grind. But I have my doubts as to whether he said it at all. It seems doubtful that Fischer that a former World Junior Champion would be unknown to Fischer by 1972. He might not have seen many of his games in the pre-Internet Age, but Fischer must have been well aware of who he was. |
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| Nov-24-22 | | Olavi: Karpov had won the Alekhine Memorial in 1971 together with Stein, arguably the strongest tournament since AVRO 1938... not very likely Fischer uttered those words. |
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| Nov-24-22 | | Petrosianic: <Olavi>: <Karpov had won the Alekhine Memorial in 1971 together with Stein, arguably the strongest tournament since AVRO 1938... not very likely Fischer uttered those words.> Yes, but it's possible that he said something similar that the speaker misreported. More likely he said that he hadn't seen many of Karpov's games, which would be plausible. These days, when you can pull up any game you want in a database, often the same day it's played, it's hard to imagine what things were like in those days. There are stories about Fischer pestering anyone who went to the USSR, asking if they'd been able to bring back any Taimanov games, because Fischer was interested in the 3...a6, 4...b5 line in the Ruy Lopez, and Taimanov was known to play it sometimes. Finding games back then meant getting hold of obscure periodicals, and lots of passing around hand to hand. These days, that stuff is at everyone's fingertips. |
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Nov-24-22
 | | HeMateMe: Excellent conversation, above. Apparently Fischer's wheels hadn't come off yet. Maybe when he was finally broke, after donating large sums of money to Garner Ted Armstrong's church of god that the harsh realities of life began to set in. Seems ironic that a smart, cynical life long new Yorker like Fischer would be duped by a religious huckster. If RF was still reading Chess Informants each month he most certainly knew who anatoly Karpov was and that he was a damn good player. |
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| Nov-26-22 | | Olavi: There were also Karpov's tournaments at Caracas 1970, Hastings 71-72, Russian and USSR championships, and Fischer was an avid Shakhmaty v SSSR reader (that's where he got the ladies' games from - Tal tells the story a bit differently), and surely the restarted 64 as well. I think he knew a lot of Karpov's games. But some sort of misinterpretation is possible. |
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Nov-29-22
| | Eggman: I think a distinction is getting lost here. Regarding Karpov, Fischer is quoted as saying "I've *hardly* heard of him", not "I haven't heard of him", after all. There's a real difference there. Fischer would have been pretty busy in '72 preparing for Spassky, and there were a lot of new-on-the-scene younger players to keep track of. I don't think it was yet clear that Karpov was the best of these. |
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Nov-29-22
 | | keypusher: <Eggman: I think a distinction is getting lost here. Regarding Karpov, Fischer is quoted as saying "I've *hardly* heard of him", not "I haven't heard of him", after all. There's a real difference there. Fischer would have been pretty busy in '72 preparing for Spassky, and there were a lot of new-on-the-scene younger players to keep track of. I don't think it was yet clear that Karpov was the best of these.> Fischer's comment is not even a teensy bit credible. <I have no doubt Fischer was aware of who Karpov was in 1966 or 1967, never mind 1973, even if no one else outside Zlatoust was. Tim Krabbe has an amazing anecdote about Fischer meeting up with some relatively minor Dutch master in '70 or '71 and knowing everything about the master's career, prospects, errors etc. If he knew that much about the Dutch master, you can bet he knew everything there was to know about Karpov.> Robert James Fischer (kibitz #25895) |
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Nov-29-22
| | MissScarlett: Bobby in ironic comment shocker. Americans confounded half-a-century later. |
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Feb-14-23
 | | FSR: Amazingly, it appears that almost years later, half of the 16 participants are still with us: Karpov, Portisch, Hort, Suttles, Mecking, Campos Lopez, Kaplan, and Saidy. |
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| Feb-15-23 | | Petrosianic: <FSR: Amazingly, it appears that almost years later, half of the 16 participants are still with us: Karpov, Portisch, Hort, Suttles, Mecking, Campos Lopez, Kaplan, and Saidy.> That's the kind of post that belongs on Facebook. People are death-obsessed there, and would eat something like that up even if they weren't chess players. |
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Feb-15-23
| | FSR: <Petrosianic> I posted that fact on Facebook first. |
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| Feb-15-23 | | savagerules: https://www.pgt.com/news/ken-smith-... Here's an interesting short article about the guy who finished last in this tournament. Ken (Top Hat) Smith who was both a chess and poker player. He is also the Smith in the Smith Morra Gambit opening. The writer or AI did mess up a few facts like saying Fischer Spassky poker match instead of chess match. |
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Feb-15-23
| | perfidious: Ken Smith was known on the poker circuit as 'Whattaplayer', the phrase he would declaim after winning a pot. As to the players of this event who have taken their leave, curious how two (Keres and Byrne) punched their tickets within four years of San Antonio, then came a lull before Petrosian went to his reward. |
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Feb-15-23
| | HeMateMe: Fischer's scanty appearances and comments are analyzed in detail like the Zapruder film. |
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