Older players will remember names like Alexander Tsvetkov[, Oleg Neikirch, Kamen Piskov, Milko Bobotsov, Nikola Padevsky, Nikola Spiridonov, Ivan Radulov, Evgenij Ermenkov and Georgi Tringov that popped up in the crosstables of a lot of European tournaments in years gone by.
Older Americans will be familiar with Nikolay Minev (November 8, 1931 – March 10, 2017) who was a Bulgarian IM and noted chess author. Along with his wife Minev emigrated to the United States in the mid-1980s and settled in Seattle, Washington. He was associated with Yasser Seirawan’s magazine Inside Chess in the 1980s and 1990s. He was the champion of Bulgaria in 1953, 1965, and 1966. He played for Bulgaria in the Olympiads in 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, and 1966. He died on 10 March 2017 in Seattle.
Varna is the third largest city in Bulgaria and the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. The city has been a major economic, social and cultural center for almost three thousand years. It’s an important center for business, transportation, education, tourism, entertainment and healthcare. The city also the maritime capital of Bulgaria and headquarters the Bulgarian Navy and merchant marine.
Yes, Bulgaria has a navy! It has been largely overlooked in the reforms that Bulgaria had to go through in order to comply with NATO standards, mostly because of the great expense involved and the fact that naval assaults are not considered to be a great concern for the country's security. Only a few of the more modern frigates, corvettes and missile crafts are on active duty. During WW2 the Bulgarian Navy supported the Axis Powers in the Black Sea and consisted mainly of four obsolete torpedo boats and eight motor torpedo boats. Bulgaria saw little naval fighting during the war, its main action taking place in October 1941. Bulgaria changed sides and joined the Soviet Union in September 1944.
Varna has what is known as an oceanic climate with Mediterranean influences in summer, continental influences in the Fall and Winter. The Black Sea climate is milder than the inland parts of the country. Summer begins in early May and lasts till early October and average in the low to mid 80s. Snow is possible in the coldest months, but can quickly melt.
The 15th Olympiad took place between September 15 and October 10, 1962 in Zlatni Piasaci (Golden Sands), near Varna at the Casino Restaurant. The Chief Arbiter was Soviet GM Salo Flohr. Thirty-seven teams and 220 players churned out 1452 games (8 games were forfeited).
No doubt the most famous game was the drawn Fischer-Botvinnik encounter which is the only time they ever played each other. For an interesting article on the chess pieces used at Varna see the article on Chess.com HERE.
The above photo from the American Chess Magazine's Facebook page shows Bobby Fischer studying a daily bulletin from the Varna Olmpiiad.
The Soviet team with 6 GMs (Botvinnik, Petrosian, Spassky, Keres, Geller and Tal) lived up to expectations and won for the sixth consecutive time. Yugoslavia (Gligorić, Trifunovic, Matanović, Ivkov, Parma, Minic) took second and Argentina (Najdorf, Bolbochán, Panno, Sanguineti, Rossetto, Foguelman) finished third.
The US team (Fischer, Benko, Evans, R. Byrne, D. Byrne, Mednis) finished off the podium in fourth place. They were followed by Hungary Bulgaria (Padevsky, Tringov, Minev, Kolarov, Milev, Popov), West Germany, East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, The Netherlands and Austria.
Spassky’s opponent in this game was Klaus Darga (born February 24, 1934), a West German Grandmaster. Darga was the West German Junior Champion and shared first place in the World Junior Championship of 1953, with Oscar Panno of Argentina who was awarded the title on tiebreak. Darga won the West German Chess Championship in 1955 and 1961.
His best performance is held to be the 1967 Winnipeg tournament, where he also tied for first place with Bent Larsen, whom he beat, ahead of Boris Spassky and Paul Keres (tied) He was awarded the title of IM in 1957 and GM in 1964. He played for West Germany in ten Olympiads between 1954 and 1978, and also served as coach of the German national team. He was second reserve for the World team in the 1970 Match of the Century between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, but did not play.
After his retirement as a chess professional, Darga became a computer programmer for IBM.
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