Zonal Qualifiers C01-C12 : Archive.org

Continuing with my previous post, Zonal Qualifiers C01-C16 : Archive.org, I noted the first steps for documenting the interzonal qualification process in C01-C12:-

I downloaded the three [GMG] pages from Archive.org and combined the ten different regional tables into a single table. I then split that table into cycles covering C01 through C16.

The tables for each cycle contain data about individual players plus info about the qualification process. For example, the data on the 20 players in the first Interzonal is shown here:-

C01 IZ Qualifiers

This should match my corresponding page on the 1948 Saltsjobaden Interzonal Tournament. Info about the qualification process for that same cycle is collected here:-

• 'Hilversum Zonal 1947 gathered the champions of the various European FIDE member nations together. O'Kelly de Galway of Belgium came 1st, but must have declined to play at Saltsjobaden. Trifunovic and Pachman shared second. Szabo came in a tie for fifth. Pirc, Gligoric and Tartakover were not invited to Hilversum, but were nominated by ballot by the FIDE directors to play in the Interzonal.'
• 'Isaac Kashdan came in second at the U.S. ch. of 1946. Reshevsky the winner was seeded into the 1948 World ch. at The Hague/Moscow, and Kashdan qualified to play at Saltsjobaden IZ 1948. Arnold Denker was selected by FIDE ballot, but apparently both Kashdan and Denker declined to play. Israel Horowitz seems to have been offered a place as well as a replacement, but must have declined as well.'
• 'Najdorf and Stahlberg shared first and Erich Eliskases came third in a strong tournament at Mar Del Plata in 1947. Eliskases must have declined to play.'
• 'All Soviet players were selected based on their results in ballots submitted by the FIDE directors. Boleslavsky came second at the 15th USSR ch. 1947, and Bondarevsky shared 3rd.'

This complements my corresponding page on the Zonals 1948-1951 (C01). In the 'C01-C16 : Archive.org' post, I also noted:-

There is some overlap in cycles C13-C16. I'll decide how to handle that when I come back to the subject.

For example, the first of my pages on those cycles is Zonal Qualifiers 1984-1987 (C13). Although I haven't decided how to handle the 'overlap', the C13 page shows the sort of thing I'm aiming at for C01-C12.

FIDE's Consummate Diplomat

The last two posts -- An Organization of Amateurs and Notes on C06 and C07 -- have featured Bent Larsen giving his opinion on Candidate matches of the 1960s. In 'Organization of Amateurs', he was particularly critical of FIDE's Folke Rogard.

Q: To what do you attribute your loss to Spassky? A: The main reason would be the way FIDE President Rogard organized this match. He did this in a way which I can only describe as scandalous. Both players and the organizations were very dissatisfied. He did not even do it through the Swedish Chess Federation or the local chess club -- it was just a private arrangement.

Sour grapes? (Larsen lost the match.) Scandinavian rivalry? (A Dane and a Swede.) Something else? In the interest of fairness, let's move forward a few years to Chess Life, February 1971 (p.64), and examine a long excerpt from 'Folke Rogard of FIDE : The World Chess Federation Comes of Age' by Fred Cramer, 'Vice-President of FIDE, Zone 5'.

[Rogard] was a very promising young player, finishing ahead of Spielmann, but behind Rubinstein, Reti and Bogolyubov (with whom he drew) in a 50-player event at Stockholm in 1920, though aided by a pairing novelty (the IGM's played four games simultaneously!)

But he was an even more promising lawyer, beginning practice in London in 1922, setting up for himself in Stockholm in 1925, and building a prosperous organization with major clients, seven attorneys, and numerous clerks and chauffeurs, which still continues, but smaller now. (No one can ever know how much clerical time, materials, rent, cables, postage, translating expense, and the like this firm gave FIDE at no cost. FIDE's administrative operations far exceed those of USCF, though its budget is about one-tenth!)

Twenty-five years of European legal activity developed his personal magnetism and assurance, gave him a corporation lawyer's bedrock logic and a judge's compassion and fairness, sharpened his command of five major languages, and left him a consummate diplomat. He, if anybody, was adequately equipped for the terrible task of picking up the wracked remains of FIDE in those desperate days of the late forties. He was FIDE Vice-President for the northern zone when Dr. Alexander Rueb of Holland, FIDE's first president, who "for a quarter of a century fulfilled this important office with great skill and diplomacy," (Foldeak), asked him to take the helm, pleading that at 66 he did not feel up to the terrific post-war problems of FIDE. Rogard became the second president of FIDE in 1949, serving through 1970, when he became Honorary President. (Dr. Max Euwe is now President.)

Terrific indeed those problems were. Limping back from the war, FIDE mustered only seven members at its 1946 Congress. It took four years more to restore the Olympiad which, with cutting irony, drew 16 teams (Dubrovnik 1950), just what it drew when it began (London 1927). These were surface symptoms. The real malady lay in the cold war, which permeated every nerve and sinew of FIDE -- political enmity preoccupied most members; chess problems were approached on a political basis; deadlock followed deadlock; confrontation followed confrontation. Many people told Rogard that cold war problems made FIDE'S existence impossible, but others -- with whom he agreed -- advised that world discord presented a great opportunity, one FIDE could use advantageously.

Resolution of the underlying malady is Rogard's monument. FIDE needed a Churchill, and got one. He spoke softly, and he talked tough; he recessed meetings, juggled agendas, ordered cooling-off periods, mediated, bargained, reconciled, pleaded. For much of this the setting was that very lobby-spot where I now sat.

Political problems remained his first concern for three or four years, but a slight easing of the cold war and his resoluteness of purpose began to pay off. The FIDE delegates moved toward our position of today: that chess problems are for us and political problems are for other functionaries, that political coloration of chess matters serves neither chess nor politics, and that while political objectives differ, chess objectives essentially don't, though it takes a lot of time to agree on what they are and how to approach them, within the framework of political conflicts.

As political objectives grudgingly yielded the stage to chess objectives, FIDE began to move. Not that politics has disappeared -- only last year Russia insisted that Israel was an "unsafe" place for student teams -- nor that there have been no other problems. The world championship, after Alekhine's death, is a whole story in itself. Or take that July day in 1954, six weeks before the start of the Olympiad, when the organizers called the whole thing off. (It was held anyway, in another country!)

Perhaps FIDE 1949 was stronger than FIDE 1924 -- personally I judge the opposite -- but unquestionably FIDE 1971 is a maturing and vigorous organization, membership (at 72) up tenfold, functions vastly multiplied and expanded into many new fields. Most significantly, thinks the man who presided over this, the authority of FIDE has come to be recognized.

As for Cramer, the most comprehensive biography I could find is now in Archive.org: The Chessmill -> Fred Cramer by Roman Levit.

Averbakh on the World Championship

In yesterday's post on my main blog, Friendly Chess Players, I introduced Averbakh's 'Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: A Personal Memoir'. The book is filled with stories about the World Championship, some of them new to me, many of them in more detail than I've seen before. Here's a list, each entry starting with its first page number in the book.

059 : 1950 CT
063 : 1951 19th USSR Chp semifinal (pre-zonal)
064 : ---- Pen portraits (A)
070 : 1951 19th USSR Chp (zonal)
071 : 1952 IZ
078 : 1953 CT
092 : 1955 22nd USSR Chp (zonal)
100 : ---- Sparring partner to MB
108 : 1958 25th USSR Chp (zonal)
110 : 1958 IZ
112 : ---- Early rules for WCC
120 : 1959 CT
129 : 1962 CT
147 : 1968 IZ playoff
154 : 1971 CM: TP-VK, RF-TP
157 : ---- Baturinsky
163 : 1972 WC: RF-BS
164 : 1963 VS & zonal
166 : 1974 CM: TP-LP, VK-TP
169 : 1977 CM: VK-TP
171 : 1974 FIDE Congress: AK-RF
175 : 1974 CM: AK-VK
178 : 1976 VK defection
185 : 1978 WC: AK-VK, Sevastianov
190 : 1982 IZ
193 : 1972 WC: RF-BS, Euwe
194 : 1982 FIDE President Campomanes
199 : 1982 CM: VS-RH, VS-ZR, GK-VK
214 : 1984 WC: AK-GK I
220 : 1985 WC: GK-AK II
221 : 1986 WC: GK-AK III
223 : 1987 FIDE Presidential election, GMA
223 : 1987 WC: GK-AK IV
224 : 1988 USSR Chp, GK-AK playoff
227 : 1988 USSR vs. World charity match
229 : 1990 Women's CT, Krogius
232 : 1972 Graz, Huebner - Rogoff (B)
233 : 1990 FIDE Presidential election
235 : 1987 GMA
236 : ---- Chess psychology (C)
240 : 1982 OL: Manila
242 : 1993 Schism, PCA, GK-NS, AK-JT
247 : 1994 OL: Salonika -> Moscow
250 : 1994 FIDE Presidential election
251 : 1995 FIDE Congress, Paris, Ilyumzhinov

IZ: Interzonal
CT: Candidate Tournament
CM: Candidate Match
WC: World Championship
OL: Olympiad (esp. Congress++)

AK: Karpov, BS: Spassky, GK: Kasparov, JT: Timman, LP: Portisch, MB: Botvinnik, NS: Short, RF: Fischer, RH: Huebner, TP: Petrosian, VK: Korchnoi, VS: Smyslov, ZR: Ribli

(A) Zubarev, Blumenfeld, Duz-Khotimirsky, Rabinovich, Verlinsky, Romanovsky
(B) A little known story about the future IMF Chief Economist; nothing to do with WC
(C) Incl. six categories of player as in 'Friendly Chess Players'

Although Averbakh's book deserves a review on my blog, this summary will have to do for now.

Fortunate with His Temperament

Fischer (1943-2008), Filip (1928-2009), Smyslov (1921–2010), Larsen (1935–2010), now Gligoric (1923–2012); one by one the World Championship contenders of the mid-20th century are leaving us: Svetozar Gligoric, legend of the King's Indian, dies at 89, (Chessvibes.com, 14 August 2012).

The first chapter of Gligoric's I Play against Pieces (Batsford 2002) is autobiographical, with several passages relating to his struggles for the World Championship. A sample:-

An episode from my 'comeback' in 1967: After the Interzonal in Portoroz 1958 I gave the impression of being one of favourites in the Candidates tournament 1959 of 8 participants, and I disappointed my audience when I finished 5th-6th in the company of a young grandmaster by name of Bobby Fischer... I continued my 'going down' in the Interzonals at Stockholm 1962 and Amsterdam 1964, failing twice to qualify for the Candidates stage. When I went to Sousse in 1967, nothing spectacular was to be expected from me.

At that time, I had some new ideas for a safe opening repertoire and intended, as usual, to rely on my intuition during play. My plan was not to lose a single game and to gain the minimum number of wins necessary for qualification -- and that I thought I could do.

I was 44 and it surprised me when my new second, young Velimirovic, treated me like a novice in international chess. He forced me to break my regular habits and to spend 2-3 hours each morning in preparation for the game in the afternoon. It was like a prophecy of how chess players behave nowadays, where preparation can offer a 90% guarantee of success.

Gligoric finished tied for 2nd-4th (+7-0=14) with Korchnoi and Geller (1967 Sousse Interzonal Tournament). The following year he played Tal in the first round of the Candidate matches.

My tactics were like balancing on the brink of a threatening abyss -- if I lost a single game. It did happen in my next match with Tal who, in 1968 said that for several reasons Belgrade as a playing site was a handicap to me. I was leading after five games and both Tal and his second Koblentz believed that I was going to win the match.

Then in the 6th game, stupidly irritated by journalistic comments on the 'monotony of our duel', I shocked myself with a sudden decision at the board to make a 3rd move as White for which I was unprepared. After that defeat I collapsed. If one could explain it -- I must have been tired of the situation with no tranquillity. Among other things, the playing hall was across the street from where I lived downtown with my wife and this was like an open invitation to benevolent visitors to frequent our place. However I was fortunate with my temperament and did not regret one bit my lost chance.

Not only was Gligoric a world class player, he was also a world class journalist and a world class arbiter. The man who declared himself to be 'fortunate with my temperament' is already in the books as one of the greatest.

Dvoretsky on the World Championship

On my main blog (see Recently Spotted - Blog Carnival & Soviet School), I mentioned The Big Dvoretsky Interview on Chessvibes.com. Part 1 isn't particularly relevant to the World Championship, but the two other parts are. Dvoretsky, a world class trainer and 'the strongest IM never to make GM', touched three times on the importance of the endgame.

Part 2: Bronstein didn’t win his World Championship match against Botvinnik; it ended in a draw. Botvinnik hadn’t played for three years, he was absolutely out of training and his openings were worse at this moment than Bronstein’s openings, but still Bronstein didn’t win. Both players won five games. So Bronstein lost five games; three of those five games he lost from equal, drawn endgames. So if he had been better in endgames he would have become World Champion. Three out of five games were drawn endgames; I believe that it is quite impressive.

In 1995 grandmaster Topalov was very weak in endgames. His manager Danailov told me that he doesn’t feel confident in endgames and even avoided profitable endgames sometimes and so he would lose points in endgames, and so on. So we arranged a training session in Moscow; we worked just twelve days. After this session Topalov won the majority of tournaments which he played during the next year. He won, if I remember correctly, eighty rating points and took third place on the rating list. So, you see, he was a very strong grandmaster at this moment but even for such a level it was very important because it was his weak side.

Part 3: Tal wasn’t good in the endgame when he was young. Fortunately for him at some moment players couldn’t use it but in his second match against Botvinnik, Botvinnik used it several times.

He also touched on a subject that pops up in just about every interview I've seen for the past month.

Part 3: What is your opinion on Magnus Carlsen’s decision to withdraw from the Candidates? • You know, everybody can make any decision. I don’t know his motivation, his real reasons and so on, so it makes no sense to discuss it not with Magnus himself. On the other hand of course this decision was made because he had some problems with the modern World Championship. It’s true, there are really serious problems which are very interesting to discuss, but it’s a big topic, a separate topic, perhaps we shouldn’t do it now. For example he mentioned the great privileges of the World Champion – I absolutely agree with him. I know that Kramnik, Gelfand and some others disagree, Kasparov, Karpov. But many players agree with this position and I also agree.

On the other hand he told that the World Champion shouldn’t have any advantage, any privileges, and this is also wrong. When we play a World Championship it should be a system, not a single match or tournament, it’s a system. So everybody starts at some stage and it’s natural that some players came to the next stage by winning or keeping some results in previous stages and some of them get the right to play just because of their previous successes, it’s absolutely natural. The win of the previous World Championship is also something we can consider the win of some previous tournament, so the winner should have some privileges, but of course not so fantastic as he has now. Also in the case of Carlsen: why should he play in the Candidates, he should start in the semi-final of the Norwegian championship, because maybe some younger generation can beat him. He should also play several steps and don’t have privileges.

He got in because of rating of course... • Rating is also a previous result, it’s not ‘this set-up of competitions for this World Championship’, it’s previous results, it’s also a success like winning a previous World Championship, so it gives some privileges but not absolute privileges, like now. But it’s a topic for a serious discussion and perhaps we have no time for it. Some other problems he mentioned are also connected to modern FIDE and their policy, their strategy… In many areas he is absolutely right – FIDE is a horrible organization now but again it’s a topic for a separate discussion.

The comments on the 1951 Botvinnik - Bronstein match and the 1961 Botvinnik - Tal match are worth pursuing.

Carlsen Quits (Again)

GM Magnus Carlsen's announcement that he would no longer participate in the current World Championship cycle -- Magnus Carlsen drops out of World Championship cycle (Chessbase.com) -- sent shock waves through the chess world and shivers (déja vu style) up my spine. Instead of jumping to any conclusions as to Carlsen's motives, I decided to compile a list of similar incidents. Before I could start, I discovered I had been anticipated by the Daily Dirt (the dates in square brackets '[]' are mine):-

Alekhine dodged Capablanca [>1927]. Fischer disappeared instead of playing Karpov [1975]. Or was he taking a principled stand for rigorous rules? Shirov should have played Kasparov for next to no money. Or was it Kasparov who was dodging Shirov [1998]? Kramnik dodging Kasparov's quest for a rematch, or was he trying to restore a credible cycle [2001]? Kasparov skipping the Dortmund qualifier [2002], Ponomariov and Kasparov never playing [2003], and now Carlsen and, well, Ilyumzhinov [2010]. There are a dozen more we could add. • Carlsen Bails from WCh Cycle (Chessninja.com)

'Only a dozen more?', I thought. Here's a list I came up with after about 30 minutes, mostly spent on verification:-

• 1948: Fine [WCC match tournament]
  
• 1950: Reshevsky, Fine, Euwe, Bondarevsky [Budapest CT]; for several reasons
  
• 1965: Botvinnik [CM]

• 1964: Fischer [Amsterdam IZ]
  
• 1967: Fischer [Sousse IZ]
  
• 1972: Fischer [Reykjavik WCC]; will he or won't he?
  
• 1975: Fischer [WCC vs. Karpov]

• 1971: Huebner [CM qf vs. Petrosian]
  
• 1980: Huebner [CM f vs. Korchnoi]

• 1985: KK1; terminated by Campomanes
  
• 1986: KK3; Kasparov threatened to quit
  
• 1993: Kasparov - Short; played wthout FIDE

• 1996: Ilyumzhinov cancels Interzonal and replaces with KOs
  
• 1997: Kramnik [Groningen KO]
  
• 1999: Karpov [Las Vegas KO]

• 1998: Anand [WCC vs. Kasparov, declined]
  
• 1999: Anand [ditto, cancelled]
  
• 2000: Anand [ditto, declined]

There's some overlap there with the Chessninja list. I could have added more from the FIDE KOs played after 2000, but I became bored with the exercise. More challenging would have been a list of cycles where there weren't any such shenanigans. For a similar overview, see my post Troubled Matches from a few years ago. Maybe it has something to do with chess players not wanting to submit to authority.

Botvinnik Rules

Throughout 'My Great Predecessors II', Kasparov was critical of limitations placed on Soviet players in the qualifying cycles of the 1950s and 1960s. He wrote the following in the chapter on Botvinnnik (p.186; I've left out details about individual circumstances).

[In 1958] there began a spell of bad luck and vexing failures in Bronstein's career. The cause of this was largely the Botvinnik initiated limit on the representatives from one country (i.e. the USSR) in the Candidates tournaments: not more than five out of eight were allowed.

In the Interzonal tournament in Portoroz 1958 there were six qualifiers, but the four Soviet grandmasters were fighting for only three places (since Smyslov and Keres were already in the list of Candidates), and willingly or not they were forced to play keeping an eye on one another. Both [Bronstein] and Averbakh missed out by half a step.

He was to suffer an even crueller stroke of fate at the Interzonal in Amsterdam 1964, where five Soviet grandmasters were fighting for the same three places. Another to suffer was Stein, who fell victim to the 'Botvinnik rule' for the second consecutive time.

It was effectively on account of this unjust restriction that two such splendid players as Bronstein and Stein missed out on the battle for the World Championship. Their replacements in the Candidates events were not of equivalent strength and it is clear that, with their participation, things at the top of chess could have turned out differently.

Alas, few now remember these human dramas. But meanwhile they reflected the unnatural situation that existed in chess in the 1950s and 1960s, when many of the best grandmasters, occupying most of the places in the world's top 30, had no opportunity to participate fully in the World Championship qualifying cycle -- for the only reason that they were Soviets.

Some will retort: but with this limit, fighting spirit was strengthened and only the very best made it to the top -- that is by the laws of Darwinism, the strongest survived. But just think how much nervous energy it cost these world-class stars to battle among themselves for the right to squeeze through the eye of a needle. And how it must have been to recognize that you are stronger and have occupied a higher place, but it is another player who will go through. Were not these unhealed spiritual wounds one of the causes of the untimely death of Leonid Stein?

(That last sentence deserves special attention, but it takes me too far from the subject at hand; this is not the right place to address it.) In the same chapter (p.215) Kasparov linked the 'Botvinnik rule' with the right to a return match.

In 1956, soon after Smyslov's second victory in the Candidates tournament, an event occurred that was to have a strong influence on the entire modern history of chess: FIDE granted the World Champion the right to a return match. The decision was adopted together with the aforementioned 'Botvinnik rule', and also not without the participation of [Botvinnik] (I should remind you that his friend Ragozin was a FIDE Vice-President).

Although earlier, in the late 1940s, in his plan for the contesting of the World Championship, he had rejected the idea of the return match, since 'it's organization would disturb the periodicity of the system, and in the interests of chess this must not be allowed', and he had gained the right for a defeated champion to play a match-tournament with the champion and the challenger three years later (this FIDE rule operated in the 1951 and 1954 matches).

The inescapable conclusion is that Botvinnik was behind both the limitation on Soviet players and the return match because these rules gave him better chances to retain his World Championship title. While I have no particular argument with this conclusion, I still wonder to what extent the 'Botvinnik rule' was a consequence of other federations' fears of Soviet collusion, as described in Collusion and Consequences. Perhaps it wasn't really a 'Botvinnik rule', but rather Botvinnik seeing personal advantage in a rule favored by the other chess federations.

In 'Predecessors IV' Kasparov dismissed the idea that Soviet collusion was responsible for Fischer's mediocre showing at Curacao in 1962. 'At that moment Bobby was not yet ready to win such a tournament -- irrespective of whether or not there was such a pact. Averbakh: "If Fischer could have beaten the Soviet grandmasters, as was to happen later in the early 1970s, no amount of draws would have been able to stop him."' (p.300). In other words, to win against collusion, a player had to be significantly better than the Soviet opposition. Tightly contested tournaments would always favor the Soviet bloc.

FIDE implemented matches to eliminate collusion in the Candidate tournaments. Was the primary objective of the earlier 'Botvinnik rule' to eliminate collusion in Interzonals rather than to favor Botvinnik?

Cumulative Scores

In Chigorin Stumbles at Hastings 1895, I developed a new database query that generated a table showing the round-by-round progress of the leaders at Hastings 1895. It's a useful tool to identify the critical games in a round-robin (all-play-all) event.

I liked the concept so much that I used it to generate a similar table -- I call it a 'Cumulative Score' -- for each of the following World Championship events...

• 1948 FIDE Title Tournament
  
• 1950 Budapest Candidates Tournament
  
• 1953 Zurich Candidates Tournament
  
• 1956 Amsterdam Candidates Tournament
  
• 1959 Yugoslavia Candidates Tournament
  
• 1962 Curacao Candidates Tournament

...i.e. the first FIDE World Championship and the five candidate events covered by the study that I criticized in Calculating Collusion.

The cumulative score for the 1948 FIDE title event, where play was divided between The Hague and Moscow, is shown on the left. The three character codes at the top of the table are abbreviations for the five players who participated in the event: Botvinnik, Euwe, Keres, Reshevsky, and Smyslov; the blank cells (e.g. Botvinnik in Rd.1) show who had the bye in a round; and the dark horizontal lines show the end of each round-robin stage and the beginning of the next.

The 1948 event didn't appear to be particularly suspenseful. Botvinnik took the lead during the first stage, never relinquished it, and was assured of first place after the 22nd round. There was, however, a tight battle for second place, where Reshevsky missed his chance by losing in the 24th round (to Botvinnik).

A cumulative score is useful for understanding first person narratives like that by Keres in 'Grandmaster of Chess - The Complete Games of Paul Keres' (p.295). It started,

In the spring of 1948 I went to Holland in order to contest, at long last, the highest chess title in the world. For various reasons Fine declined to participate and so this left five of us to embark on this momentous conflict. From the very first rounds a fierce struggle developed and this continued right to the very last games. I began the tournament with two wins, against Euwe and Smyslov, but then lost in the ensuing rounds against Reshevsky and Botvinnik and at the end of the first tour I stood equal with Smyslov in third and fourth places.

About the third stage he wrote,

I came to within 1.5 points of Botvinnik and now everything hung on our individual encounter. In the event of a win I would come to within half a point of the leader and the issue of the tournament would be once again wide open.

This deciding encounter had a most complicated and exciting course and constituted a stiff test for the nerves of both players. Out of a complicated middlegame I succeeded in evolving a position of the most promising kind. Then, however, I failed to utilize my opportunities to the best advantage and the scales tipped over in Botvinnik's favor. Then there ensued a whole series of inaccuracies committed by both sides and when the game was eventually adjourned a double Rook endgame with an extra Pawn for Botvinnik had arisen.

When play was resumed Botvinnik did not find the best line and a Rook ending resulted that should have been easily drawn. But the vicissitudes of the game were by no means ended. Both sides conducted the game imprecisely and it was I who made the last mistake. By the time the second adjournment came Botvinnik had an easily won position and I suffered a bitter defeat. With this win Botvinnik had in practice ensured for himself victory in the tournament since with only eight more games to be played he already had a lead of 2.5 points.

The cumulative score indicates that this was the game played in round 15. Keres' description of its 'vicissitudes' is hard to reconcile with conspiracy theorists who claim he was under orders to let Botvinnik win the tournament. Keres' account also shows that the event was more suspenseful than the crosstable alone would indicate.

Calculating Collusion

Continuing with the series on Soviet collusion in the 1950s and 1960s (see the previous post Solutions to Collusion), in 2006 Charles C. Moul and John V. Nye, both university professors in economics, published a study of the subject: Did the Soviets Collude? A Statistical Analysis of Championship Chess 1940-64.

Abstract: We expand the set of outcomes considered by the tournament literature to include draws and use games from post-war chess tournaments to see whether strategic behavior is important in such scenarios. In particular, we examine whether players from the former Soviet Union acted as a cartel in international tournaments - intentionally drawing against one another in order to focus effort on non-Soviet opponents - to maximize the chance of some Soviet winning. Using data from international qualifying tournaments as well as USSR national tournaments, we estimate models to test for collusion. Our results are consistent with Soviet draw-collusion and inconsistent with Soviet competition. Simulations of the period's five premier international competitions (the FIDE Candidates tournaments) suggest that the observed Soviet sweep was a 75%-probability event under collusion but only a 25%-probability event had the Soviet players not colluded.

Of the five Candidate Tournaments in the study -- Budapest 1950 through Curacao 1962 -- the Curacao event has always received the most attention, largely due to Fischer's public accusation of Soviet cheating. It was, however, the 1953 Zurich Candidates Tournament where collusion, if it occurred, caused the most damage to the chances of the non-Soviet players, Reshevsky in particular. Moul and Nye's findings for the event are summarized in the following table.

Focusing on the line for Reshevsky, the authors wrote, 'Our calculations indicate that he had a 27% chance of winning a fair tournament. With collusion, his chances fell to 8%.' As convincing as these numbers might be, the result is flawed, relying, as it did, on the Sonas Chessmetric historical ratings. On several occasions in the past I've taken issue with Sonas's results when they failed the test of common sense. This is another case.

The last column in the table ('No cartel: % win') is based on the 'Rating' column, as calculated by Sonas. The top three ratings are Reshevsky (2780.99), Smyslov (2764.92), and Najdorf (2753.04), which is the first red flag (the six digit accuracy is also suspicious, but I won't dwell on it). The authors infer from these ratings that 'Retroactive grading has shown that Reshevsky was the favorite going into the 1953 Candidates' tournament.' While he was certainly one of the favorites, I can't imagine that many chess historians, after examination of the games between the two players (Vasily Smyslov vs. Samuel Reshevsky, Chessgames.com), where the post-WWII results give a +4-0=9 advantage to Smyslov, would argue that Reshevsky was stronger than Smyslov in 1953.

The second red flag concerns four players bunched within a range of three rating points -- Bronstein (2723.87), Boleslavsky (2722.33), Stahlberg (2721.93), and Keres (2721.02) -- implying that Stahlberg was the equal of Bronstein, Boleslavsky, and Keres. A look at the historical record shows that Bronstein drew a title match with Botvinnik in 1951, that Boleslavsky drew a playoff match with Bronstein after the 1950 Candidates, losing only in tiebreak, and that Keres finished tied with Reshevsky in the 1948 title tournament. Stahlberg finished behind Bronstein and Boleslavsky in the 1948 Interzonal (Keres was exempt) and behind all three in the 1950 Candidates; had a lifetime negative score against each of the three; and finished 15th and dead last in the 1953 Candidates, 3.5 points behind second-to-last Euwe (Bronstein and Keres finished tied with Reshevsky for 2nd-4th). Stahlberg was an excellent player, one of the West's best at that time ('among the world's best ten for a few years around 1950', according to Hooper & Whyld), but he was not at the same level as the three Soviets.

Why are the Sonas calculations so misleading? My theory is that they fail to account for the Soviet era social barrier ('Iron Curtain', anyone?) between Soviet players and Western players. Soviet players rarely played in Western events and Western players were even rarer participants in Soviet events. The two groups played in different, almost separate chess universes. A comparison of their performances requires a calibration of the separate calculations, using the few events where they actually met. It is as though the Soviets were measured with a meterstick, the Westerners measured with a yardstick, and no one bothered to check that the meterstick and the yardstick were the same length. I also suspect that Sonas overlooked many Soviet events. Moul and Nye wrote,

[The Sonas] rating does require a minimum number of observed games to construct. Games without Sonas chess-ratings for both players are dropped from the sample. While this leads to the omission of a few Interzonal games, the vast majority of dropped games are from URS championships. These omissions will presumably drive up the average observed skill of Soviet players in URS championships, and thereby make our comparison to FIDE events even more compelling.

I have a problem with that last sentence. Because the 'dropped games' would be predominantly wins by the better players, and the kept games predominantly draws between players of equivalent ability, I would presume exactly the opposite. Near the start of their paper, the authors wrote,

For the purposes of econometric analysis, chess has numerous advantages which are not common in other sports. [...] Most important of all is that there exists a rating system which is a precise and accurate reflection of the performances of players and which is an excellent indicator of the relative strengths of players.

This prerequisite was not delivered by the Sonas system. There might have been collusion among the Soviet players, but it is not shown by this study.

Collusion and Consequences

One of the small tasks in last week's post about Catching up on Maintenance was to review the earliest Interzonals. This led me to an interesting report from the November 1952 issue of Chess Review (p.323) concerning the 1952 Saltsjobaden Interzonal Tournament, which was the qualifier for the 1953 Zurich Candidates Tournament:

Soviet entrants made a clean sweep of the top five places, which qualified them to take part in the World Championship Candidates Tournament of 1953 to determine the next challenger for the world title. Seeded in this coming event are Samuel Reshevsky of the USA, Dr. Max Euwe of Holland, and the first five players in the Candidates' tournament of 1950 -- D.Bronstein, I.Boleslavsky, V.Smyslov, and P.Keres, all of Russia, and M.Najdorf of Argentina.

A noteworthy circumstance in the Saltsjobaden affair was the pacific attitude of the Russian players toward one another. All games among them were drawn! Kotov, for example, who fell with fury upon most of his non-Russian rivals, was content to play the shortest possible "grandmaster draws" with his compatriots: vs. Averbach, 20 moves; vs. Geller, 15 moves; vs. Petrosian, 15 moves; vs. Taimanov, 17 moves. Since Kotov proved to be the class of the tournament, a sterner attitude on his part toward the other Russians might well have enabled an "outsider" to squeeze into the charmed circle of qualifiers.

The two-tiered Soviet dominance is highlighted in the following portion of the 1952 Saltsjobaden page that I just referenced.

Of the ten games played between Soviet opponents, only Taimanov - Averbakh was longer than 22 moves. This apparent collusion had a number of consequences. The Chess Review report continued with the following news item.

Our Stockholm correspondent, Z. Nilsson, reports that a FIDE committee meeting in February [1953] may add to the World Championship Candidates Tournament qualifiers from the Saltsjobaden event. Four contenders tied for the fifth and last qualifying place and though Averbach qualified on S.B. points, the tiebreak was extremely minute [numbers are shown on my page]. The fact, moreover, that Averbach's place completed an all-Russian qualification and puts nine Russians to three non-Russians in the Candidates Tournament, very likely was considered.

I'm not sure why Reshevsky and Euwe were seeded into the 1953 Candidates Tournament, although it makes sense that it was because of their participation in the 1948 FIDE Title Tournament, won by Botvinnik. Chess Review added an item about Reshevsky.

Hermann Helms reports in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that Samuel Reshevsky, declaring the 9-3 setup in favor of Russians is inequitable, is unwilling to play in the 1953 World Championship Candidates Tournament for which he is seeded. He is willing to meet any of the leading Russians in straight match play, as he has done with Najdorf and Gligoric, but his challenge to Paul Keres, the Soviet Champion, has brought no reply so far. It hardly seems possible that the addition of three Candidates (one from Communist Hungary) will alter Reshevsky's stand.

I suspect that the 1952 Interzonal and 1953 Candidates Tournament were the origin of later FIDE rules that limited the number of Soviet players advancing from an Interzonal to a Candidates event. With the goal of documenting the findings on my various pages specific to the results of these events, this is worth further investigation and I'll spend a few future posts on the subject.

Catching up on Maintenance

No one, especially me, likes doing maintenance, but once in a while it's worthwhile taking the time to get various odds and ends out of the way. I changed the following pages (listed in reverse chronological order).

• 2010 Anand - Topalov • I brought this page up to date with the various FIDE announcements from the last quarter of 2009. The match starts in less than three months.
  
  
• 2004-05 Unification • This had links into About.com which were broken since 2008; I converted them to Archive.org.
  
  
• 1998-99 World Chess Council • I added a small crosstable for the 1998 Shirov - Kramnik match.
  
  
• 1979-81 cycle : Candidates Matches • I added the months when a match was played to the description for each match.
  
  
• Index of FIDE Events 1948-1990 • I had one of the first Interzonals listed as Stockholm and another listed as Saltsjobaden, even though both were played in Saltsjobaden. I corrected this on the index and on the pages for the two events. (While I was doing this I noticed that four of the first five Interzonals were played in Sweden.)

A few more maintenance items on my TODO list will have to wait until I can research certain details.