Let's drink to that, Andrei! Happy birthday!>

After the phase in which games were played at normal time controls, they then played a succession at progressively faster rapid games, culminating in G/15 (I think). Small wonder one of the players hung their queen in a rapid game-I'd like to see anyone play up to their normal strength with all that nervous tension and so much in the balance. At least when Smyslov qualified from one of his Candidates matches in the 1983 cycle, it was a simple spin of a roulette wheel!

<HeMateMe: Isn't there a Sokolov who was a Russian physicist and also a strong chess player, IM level? Could this be the same guy?>

Here's a bit of the wiki entry:

" Natan Sharansky was born in Stalino, Soviet Union on January 20, 1948 to a Jewish family. He graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As a child,< he was a chess prodigy.> He performed in simultaneous and blindfold displays, usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship in his native Donetsk.[1] When incarcerated in solitary confinement, he claims to have played chess against himself in his mind. Sharansky <beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov> in a simultaneous exhibition in Israel in 1996.[1]"

Perhaps he would have been a physicist, had it not been for his human rights work, which killed any chance of having a normal life in the USSR.

1988-89 Candidates Matches:
Kevin Spraggett upset his Soviet opponent Andrei Sokolov who relied on the old technology, the celebrated card files of Moscow's Central Chess Club. The trouble was there were virtually no Spraggett games on file!