Other surprises at the Goteborg Interzonal included a great start by Andrija Fuderer . After twelve rounds of play he had scored 7.5/11 (with one bye), but then followed a complete collapse, and Fuderer could only score three more draws in his remaining nine games, lost all the rest, and never made it to this level of play again.

It is said that after his first Olympiad in Dubrovnik (1950), the president of Argentina back then, Juan Perón, invited the Olympic team, which had finished as runner up, to a welcome reception. He accepted the invitation and went along with the other members of the team. Once there, and as a token of gratitude for the Olympic team's achievments at the Olympiad in Dubrovnik, the Argentine president, who was accompanied by his wife Eva Duarte, offered a gift to each member of the team. It was a gift they could choose, so each of them was asked what they wanted. One of them said he wanted a life insurance for the president himself, another one said he wanted a house. When it was Pilnik's turn, he walked up to the first lady Eva Duarte and said to her he wanted "a kiss from you".

Pilnik was on his way to the tournament by car at night (he was a replacement, if I remember rightly) and he crashed into a truck without its lights on. He woke up in hospital and was, not surprisingly, a few days late.

A near tragedy preceded the start of the tournament. GM Herman Pilnik of Argentina was met at Philadelphia International Airport by one of the local chess organizers and his wife. While driving to the playing site, their car was struck and overturned with part of it hanging over the edge of a steep embankment. Pilnik emerged from this brush with death with many bruises and cuts but without serious injury. The other occupants both were hospitalized with broken bones. It is a tribute to Pilnik's fighting spirit that he started his first round as scheduled, and won, against no less a player than Soltis!

A response to this last assertion from another thread:

<May-13-08 brankat: <whiteshark> I used to know some people who, in turn, had known Fuderer. GM Ivkov, among others. They were good friends. Apparently, Fuderer's failure in 1955 was not the reason for his quitting a "professional" chess career. Even before, he had already planned to devote himself to scientific pursuits.

In 1955 he turned 24, and it coincided with his university graduation, upon which he proceeded with the post-graduate studies.

I remember Ivkov saying that Fuderer had, and I quote: "..his own philosophical reasons..". Ivkov didn't elaborate on this.

My feeling has been that, when it became apparent how much work, study, time, energy, it would require to reach and maintain the highest level of mastery in (just) a Game, Fuderer decided to devote the same to what he perceived as a more "worthy" pursuit.

I couldn't help but notice ChessBase really hyping the present Mar del Plata tournament in Argentina. It doesn't seem to have elite players, but they are treating it as a super tournament.