26 February 2025

Feedback on C02 Zonals

At the start of the previous post, Feedback on C10 Zonals (February 2025), I wrote,
During the six months of inactivity mentioned in [a] recent post, I received a number of relevant comments about my pages, some of them requiring non-trivial updates to those pages.

A few months after the comment on the 'C10 Zonals', I received an email from Przemek Jahr [PJ; of szachypolskie.pl] titled, 'C02 Qualifiers, 3* EUR Marianske Lazne 1951-08'. That title echoes a page titled, (C02) 1951-1954 Zonal Cycle (m-w.com) plus its corresponding 'Qualifiers' page. The email informed,

According to the report of Andrzej Pytlakowski, a participant of the zonal tournament, published in "Szachy" 9/1951, a play-off for 5th place was not planned and Jan Foltys took this place due to the better Sonneborn-Berger system.

The same email included an attachment showing the cover page of the referenced Polish chess magazine.

The paragraph outlined in red translates to:-

The most fierce battle was probably for fifth place. After 12 rounds, the contenders for this place were, apart from Benko, who had 7 points at the time. Lokvenc, Sajtar and I, all with 6 points each, also claimed. It seemed that Foltys with 5 1/2 points had no chance. However, events took an unexpected turn.

Foltys, who started even worse than Barcza, pulled himself up with a magnificent finish. Foltys gained 4 1/2 points from the last 5 games, winning against Benko among others. The game, as it turned out, decided who would qualify fifth for the interzonal tournament. Benko, playing white, gained an advantage, which he methodically increased. However, he ran into a very serious time deficit, which became the cause of his defeat.

Shortly before the time control, instead of carrying out a winning maneuver, Benko suffered material losses, as a result of which he lost the game. In general, time deficits were the greatest enemy of the talented Hungarian, who was the youngest participant in the tournament.

Foltys and Benko obtained an equal number of 10 points each and shared 5th-6th place. The Sonneborn-Berger evaluation system, which turned out to be beneficial for Foltys, decided who would play in the interzonal tournament.

The rest of the page is undoubtedly equally useful and I might tackle its translation some day.

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