Dec-11-24
 | | Open Defence: Dorfsman had been awarded the IM title the same year he wins the USSR Championship jointly with Boris Gulko ahead of Petrosian , Tal and Geller |
|
Dec-12-24
 | | An Englishman: Good Evening: Back then, did the winners of the USSR Championship automatically receive a GM title? Those tournaments could become terrifically difficult. |
|
| Dec-12-24 | | Olavi: No they did not. Not an international tournament; the one country rule was lifted much later. Also then it would give you only one title norm, for 15 games in this case. |
|
Dec-12-24
 | | perfidious: Not to mention that, in those days, title norms only lasted three years, so that one needed to make their norms within a rolling three-year period, a phenomenon written of by Soltis in (I believe) <Confessions of a Grandmaster>. |
|
Dec-12-24
| | Open Defence: Also as per many players accounts, good results were crucial to get permission to play in tournaments outside the USSR |
|
Dec-12-24
| | perfidious: Good results were one component; being a Communist Party member and having the right party official's ear was crucial, and no misbehaviour was tolerated, as below: <An (excerpt) from Genna Sosonko's book "Smart Chip from St.Petersburg". Sosonko was interviewing Ratmir Holmov who had this to say 'So it turned out that Bronstein played a World Championship match in '51 and I was disqualified in the same year. For what? We were sitting around at a tournament, that's Tarasov, Nezhmetdinov and me, drinking, and two chicks came up to us. Well, Rashid was kind of in the way, he was about fifteen years older than Tarasov and me. You turn off the tape recorder now, turn it off, can you imagine if my wife reads this... 'Anyway, basically, Rashid was flushed, he was drunk, of course, he went out to the balcony and started throwing crockery off it - vases and plates. When Nezhmetdinov drank he had all kinds of psychoses, he'd lie down under a tram or do some other dumb thing. On this occasion nothing would have happened, other than the noise of the plates, but Kotov had to stick his nose into it. He started asking questions and whatever. There was an uproar, and the police came. To cut a long story short, they summoned all three of us to Moscow, to see Rodionov, who was chairman of the Sports Committee. Nezhmetdinov grovelled before him and they decided to pardon him as he was a party member, but Tarasov and I were disqualified for a year. They also cancelled my stipend, which I received as a member of the national team.'> Then there was Korchnoi, who socialised with a woman other than his wife at the casino during Curacao 1962 and was subsequently invited to play the first Piatigorsky Cup, but the Soviet authorities made him stay home. |
|
Dec-13-24
| | Open Defence: I wonder how much of Botvinnik's personal views on how chess players should behave shaped the official attitudes.. Or was it the other way around? Anyways this is an interesting account from GM Serper https://www.chess.com/article/view/... |
|
|
|
|
Kibitzing
