Continuing with
Small Projects 'On the Cover'
(October 2023), the next small project is a follow-up to
September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover'
(September 2023). In those posts I noted,
The bulletin said, [...] Here are the final scores from Petropolis. [...] Bronstein replaced Leonid Stein, who died suddenly a few weeks before the tournament.
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'Bronstein replaced Stein', doesn't square with related info on my other pages. More research needed
By 'related info' I was referring to two pages. The first page was
(C09) Zonals 1972-1975
(m-w.com). There I quoted a correspondent, EK:-
I am missing one player. I have Polugaevsky, Smyslov, Keres, Stein, Gligoric, Hort, Portisch and ???. That missing player was then in late-1972/early-1973 replaced by Panno. After Stein passed away in July 1973, he was replaced by 2nd reserve Bronstein. Who was that missing player that was nominated by committee but declined to participate?
The second page was
(C09) Zonal Qualifiers 1972-1975
(m-w.com). There I quoted another correspondent, GMG:-
The FIDE committee selected the players who did not win a zonal spot. Leonid Stein was selected, but passed away a few weeks before, and was replaced by Oscar Panno. Bronstein, the second reservist, made a special appeal to FIDE president Euwe and was allowed to play.
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Reshevsky was chosen as third reserve by the FIDE selection committee. He seems to have been been given a place to balance the numbers at Petropolis when FIDE president Euwe gave second reservist Bronstein special dispensation to play.
It turns out that neither of those correspondents got the story right. The full story starts with the following info, taken from an appendix titled 'How They Qualified' (p.282) in World Championship Interzonals : Leningrad and Petropolis 1973 by Wade, Blackstock, and Kotov.
The first point to note is 'two, as nearly equal as possible, 16-players tournaments'. In fact, both events had 18 players; see:-
Wade, Blackstock, and Kotov (WBK) say that the 32 Interzonal participants (16 * 2) qualified as follows:-
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6 candidates from the previous cycle
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8 selected by a FIDE commission
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17 zonal qualifiers
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1 World Junior Champion
WBK also say that four other participants qualified by rules added afterward:-
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3 additional zonal qualifiers
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1 additional World Junior Champion
What about those eight participants who were 'selected by a FIDE commission'? Like EK (above), WBK listed only seven names.
(This isn't the only omission on the WBK page, but the details are not important for this discussion.)
Six names are the same on both lists, but EK mentions Gligoric as the 7th, while WBK mentions Tal. The six names on both lists plus Gligoric and Tal all played in the two Interzonals.
In addition to the eight selected participants, WBK listed more players as reserves:
Panno,
Bronstein,
Reshevsky,
Ivkov, and
Mecking.
Other sources say a total of 14 players was nominated by FIDE (apparently 8 + 6), but this doesn't change the narrative.
Both Panno and Reshevsky qualified from zonals -- as did Ivkov and Mecking -- leaving only Bronstein as a reserve player not qualified otherwise.
How did my two correspondents, who were generally accurate in their other remarks on similar topics, make their mistakes?
According to WBK, the 13/14 players selected by the FIDE commission were known 'before 31 December 1971'. The zonals were all played in 1972. It appears that most of the players on the FIDE reserve list, wanting to boost their chance of qualifying for the Interzonals, decided to participate in the appropriate Zonal.
Unless a researcher was aware that some players were on two different lists of (potential) qualifiers, he had only half the story.
It's worth noting that Panno qualified from a zone that was expanded from two to three qualifiers at the 1972 FIDE Congress, Skopje.
Quinteros and Panno finished tied for 2nd/3rd at the zone 8 tournament, held at Sao Paulo in May 1972.
If the number of qualifiers from the zone had stayed fixed at two, Panno would have played a match against Quinteros for the second qualifying place.
I couldn't find any trace of a match between the two players in 1972.
Getting back to September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover', the simple statement 'Bronstein replaced Stein' was the truth, if not the whole truth. I hope the preceding discussion is closer to the whole truth.
