Madrid 1951

     While the chess world's attention was focused on the previously mentioned world championship, there were many other interesting tournaments being played that were overshadowed by the Botvinnik-Bronstein match. 
     Major tournaments that year totaled at least 70 events. In Yugoslavia, Braslav Rabar won his country's championship for the first and only time. The RSFSR (USSR Championship) was won by Rashid Nezhmetdinov for the second year in a row. The 19th Soviet Championship was won by Keres. Ivkov won the World Junior Championship. Larry Evans won his first US championship and Miguel Najdorf took the Argentine championship. 
     There were also zonal tournaments being held...for complete details on these events see Mark Weeks article HERE. One long forgotten event was Madrid. The final standings were: 

1) Prins 12.5
2-4) Herman Steiner, Pilnik and Ossip Bernstein 11.5 
5) Toran 10.5 
6-7) Canal and Llado 10.0 
8-11) Medina, Grob, Giustolisi and Enevoldsen 9.0 
12) Fuentes 8.0 
13-14) Sanz and Perez 7.5 
15) Pomar 6.0 
16) Tramoyeres 5.0 
17) Moura 3.0 
18) Torrens 2.5 

     Going into the last round, Prins, who had lost his 16th round game to Sanz, still held a full point lead over Steiner, Pilnik and Bernstein, so their only hope was that Prins would lose to Toran which was a distinct possibility, but he won a nice Q and P ending. So, even though Steiner's nice K-side attack prevailed against Canal, Pilnik won easily against Moura when the latter contrived to lose a piece in the middlegame and Bernstein outplayed Fuentes and snagged a piece on the ending, it was impossible to catch Prins. 
     Jens Evald Enevoldsen-Elsing (September 23, 1907 – May 23, 1980) was born in Copenhagen and won the Danish Championship five times (1940, 1943, 1947, 1948, and 1960). In 1939 he shared first but lost the playoff and shared first again in 1950. He “lost” the playoff again, this time in a lottery. Enevoldsen played for Denmark eleven times in the Olympiads (1933, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1950, 1952, 1956, 1958, 1966, 1970, and 1972). He took 4th place at the Helsinki 1947 zonal. He was awarded the IM title in 1950 and was made an International Arbiter in 1960. 
     Jose Sanz Aguado (November 20, 1907 - December 14, 1969 was born in Barcelona and was the Spanish champion in 1943. Sanz' most famous legacy was that he was involved in a hoax you can read about HERE.