Oberlin is a small, quiet college town and the laid back nature seemed to have had an effect on the players and many were quite convivial. We got to stand around and engage some of them in conversation, notably local hero Milan Vukcevich, Robert Byrne, William Lombardy, Arthur Bisguier and Edmar Mednis. It turned out that even Samuel Reshevsky proved more approachable than John Grefe who was a real snot.
In other news, 1975 was a good year because the war in Vietnam ended although under tragic and chaotic circumstances, and best of all, those arrogant criminals from President Nixon's administration John N. Mitchell (Attorney General), H. R. Haldeman (White House Chief of Staff) and John D. Ehrlichman (counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs) were all found guilty for their part in the Watergate cover-up and sentenced to prison. President Gerald Ford escaped two assassination attempts within three weeks. Home videotape systems (VCRs) were developed in Japan by Sony (Betamax) and Matsushita (VHS).
Vitaly Tseshkovsky (September 25, 1944, Omsk – December 24, 2011) was born in Omsk, was awarded the IM title in 1973 and became a GM in 1975. His best tournament victories include first at Leipzig 1975, Dubna 1976, Yerevan 1980, Banja Luka 1981, Sochi 1981 and Minsk 1982.
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| Tseshkovsky in 1973 |
He was co-winner(with Tal) of the 1978 Soviet Championship and winner of the 1986 Championship...that was the year of the Chernobyl disaster which occurred around the 10th round of the championship that was being held in Kiev. The tournament continued as planned and was won by Tseshkovsky who scored an excellent 11-6. The luster of his triumph was somewhat dimmed by the absence of the top four Soviet big guns: Gary Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Rafael Vaganian and Artur Yusupov.
At the Manila Zonal in 1976, he missed out on the next stage of the World Championship by one place. His highest Elo rating was 2600 in October 2005. By 2005 ratings had skyrocketed to where the top players were the retired Kasparov (2812), Anand (2788) and Topalov (2782) and Tseshkovsky's piddling 2600 didn't even put him in the top 100! Chess In Translation has a nice article on Tseshkovsky by Kramnik.
His opponent in the below game from the 1975 Zonal at Vilnius was Eduard Gufeld (March 19, 1936 - September 23, 2002). Gufeld was a Soviet GM and author who wrote over 80 chess books. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, he emigrated to the United States and died at the age of 66 in the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. Besides Gufeld and a lot of Hollywood stars, the the infamous gangster Bugsy Siegel is buried there.
Vilnius final standings:
1-4) Boris Gulko, Vitaly Tseshkovsky, Vladimir Savon and Yuri Balashov 9.0
5-6) Mark Taimanov and Eduard Gufeld 8.5
7-9) Ratmir Kholmov, Alexander Beliavsky and Lev Alburt 8.0
10) Evgeni Vasiukov 7.5
11-12) David Bronstein and Rafael Vaganian 7.0
13-14) Vladimir Tukmakov and Mark Dvoretzky 6.0
15) Oleg Romanishin 5.0
16) Karen Grigorian 4.5
In the double round playoff, the results were inconclusive, but it was Gulko who advanced to the Interzonal where he tied for places 13-16 (out of 20) with a 9-10 score.
In this game Tseshkovsky had an easily won game, but at move 34 he realized he had a won ending, but got to correctly thinking that he deserved more. Unfortunately for him, he got his wires crossed and played 34.Bxe5+ and 35.Rf8+ in the wrong order and lost. Then in a very bad position, on move 37 he stumbled into a mate.
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