Dubrovnik 1950

Cavalier set

     I own two chess sets. One is the plastic Vintage Cavalier Tournament Edition that is listed as sold out on the House of Staunton site at $149. When I bought mine from the USCF around 30 years ago it cost a small fraction of that. 
   

Zagreb set

  The other set is the wooden Zagreb '59 set sold by the House of Staunton that cost about $70. It's an adaptation of one of the most popular sets used in international tournaments during the 1950s and 1960s. The Zagreb set matches up nicely with my vintage Russian clock that was purchased on eBay from a seller in Latvia for $60 quite a few years back. Today it's useless but it's a nice relic from another era. 
     At one time I had an inlaid chess table that was purchased from the USCF about 45 years ago for the princely sum of $180, about a week's pay in those days. A couple of years ago I donated it to a barber shop owned by my wife's cousin and it gets a lot of use by customers waiting to get their hair cut, or more accurately, styled. I have digressed. 

My Zagreb set, Russian clock and chess table

     World War II had interrupted the Olympaids and Dubrovnik was the first post-war Olympiad. In 1948 the FIDE congress submitted Yugoslavia's proposal to organize the Olymbiad in Yugoslavia, but the Tito–Stalin Split, or Yugoslav–Soviet Split, resulted in Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) in 1948 and so the Russians were opposed. In the end USSR authorities boycotted the event as did all the East European countries. England didn't play either because their national championship was being held at the same time. 
     Several teams were hoping for gold: the United States (Samuel Reshevsky, Herman Steiner, I.A. Horowitz, George Shainswit, George Kramer and Larry Evans0, Yugoslavia, Argentina, Germany and Holland. The US team was the only undefeated team, yet failed to capture the gold. 
     The event began on August 20th and Dubrovnik was experiencing a record breaking heat wave. I am not sure how hot it got, but there have been heat waves in that area before. A prolonged severe drought and heat wave occurred in the early 1950s throughout the central and southern United States. The heat was particularly severe in 1954 with 22 days of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees F. over parts of eleven states. On 14 July, the thermometer reached 117 degrees in East St. Louis, Illinois. But enough about heat waves other than to say the extreme heat was especially tough on older players. 
     One amusing incident occurred on board 1 between Reshevsky against Fotis Mastichiadis of Greece. In the following position Reshevsky has just played 24.Nd2 which loses outright after 24...Nxf2 attacking the B and threatening ...Qxe3. Realizing he had just blundered, the old fox calmly offered a draw which his opponent immediately accepted. 

Black accepted Reshevsky's draw offer.

 
Final Standings: 
1) Yugoslavia 
2) Argentina 
3) West Germany 
4) United States 
5) The Netherlands 
6) Belgium 
7) Austria 
8) Chile 
9) France 
10) Finland 
11) Sweden 
12) Italy 
13) Denmark 
14) Peru 
15) Norway 
16) Greece 

   Queen sacrifices are always pleasing and in the following game Dr. Petar Trifunovic (August 31, 1910-December 8, 1980) pulls off a nice one. Trifunovic was a GM and five-time Yugoslav Champion. He obtained his law degree in 1933, followed by a doctorate. In the 1930s he had a reputation as an attacking player, but then adapted a positional style and became very defensive. As a result he became known as a drawing master. For example, at Leipzig in 1965 he drew all 15 of his games. He was also a popular writer and on occasion his articles appeared in Chess Review. You can read an article about his visit to the US at Memphis Chess History.  His opponent, Aarne Ilmari Niemela (1907-1975), was Finnish champion in 1948.