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The 43rd Hastings Christmas Chess Festival was held at the end of the year 1967. Ten grandmasters and masters were invited to compete in a round robin format at the premier event. The notable participants of this edition included Soviet grandmasters Leonid Stein and Alexey Suetin, World Junior Champion Julio Kaplan, Czechoslovakian grandmaster Vlastimil Hort, Romanian grandmaster Florin Gheorghiu, and British junior master Raymond Keene. The final saw a four way tie for first place among Hort, Gheorghiu, St ... [more]
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Player: William Hartston
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| Apr-06-18 | | Cibator: One of the more notorious Hastings tournaments. The four-way tie for first place was deliberately engineered so as to share the prize-money equally among the grandmasters. The root of the trouble was a prize fund that was on the thin side to begin with, and too skewed in its distribution, as the table below makes clear: 1st - UKP250
2nd - UKP100
3rd - UKP50
4th - UKP25
(These sums seem derisory nowadays, but weren't quite that bad in 1968, when UKP25 was a goodish week's salary.) CHESS magazine hit the nail on the head with its comment: "Far too steep a descent. We can recall no other tournament where fourth prize was only one-tenth of first." They went on to remark that the grandmasters weren't going to allow the indignity of one their number going home with only UKP25. Hence the "obviously contrived" final result. |
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Apr-06-18
 | | MissScarlett: I read about this in one of Baruch Wood's columns. I'll try and dig it up. |
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Jul-05-25
 | | Sally Simpson: Donner in 'The King' in an article headed; 'Draw Conspiracy' (written in December 1968) said he spoke to all four of the players involved and each one said there was no fix. He added none of them were invited back for the 1968/69 event. Comments from all four merged into Hastings had become boring no longer inspiring great deeds. It is small calibre, only 10 contestants, the prizes are modest and the revolting English practice of beginning play at 9.00 am is maintained. "Superstition has a long life among the island dwellers and they believe that a man is at his brightest in the morning." Staying on the subject of short draws Donner gives a 14 move draw v Damjanovic. He is not too kind about the tournament (' a lousy tournament - small prizes, never a day off) so he does not give the exact date or venue. Here Damjanovic played 14.Nd5.
click for larger viewAnd then offered a shocked Donner a draw adding there was a sci-fi film he wanted to go and see. Donner agreed.
He then goes onto mention that 14.Nd5 appeared in a couple opening books from that period judging the move 14.Nd5 as unclear. |
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| Jul-06-25 | | FM David H. Levin: If the pairings would have had the four ultimate winners of this tournament facing only each other in the last three rounds, then meaningful collusion among them would seem feasible. But given that Stein's last game against one of the co-winners was in round 6 and gave him 3.5/6, assurance of the four-way tie would have required knowing that Stein would score 2.5 in his last three games. Thus, the alleged collusion would have had to involve other players also. The skewed prize fund, if anything, gave incentive to contrive a sole winner. Had Suetin and Gheorghiu arranged for their last-round matchup to be decisive with the stipulation that they would split the anticipated first prize, each would have won 125 pounds rather than the ~107 pounds resulting from the four-way tie. |
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