Monday, March 9, 2020

San Juan 1969


   In 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the Moon. That is if you believe the stories, but a lot of people still think the whole things was faked. Pontiac introduced the epitome of the American muscle car, the Firebird Trans Am. 
     The music world that year saw the Beatles' last public performance and despite residents’ opposition to a “hippy” music festival, more than 350,000 fans attended a three day long event in Woodstock, New York. 
     A demon possessed unemployed ex-convict who had spent more than half of his life in prison encouraged his followers to commit murders in the Los Angeles area and make the killings appear to be racially motivated. They murdered actress Sharon Tate who was 8-1/2 months pregnant and four others in her home on August 8 and 9, 1969 and they followed up with the murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the next day. Manson died in California State Prison at Corcoran on November 19, 2017; he should have died 83 years sooner. 
 
Senator Kennedy's victim
    Senator Edward Kennedythanks to his money and connections, got away clean after the drowning of his 28-year old passenger Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped inside of his car when it ran off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts after they had been at a party. Kennedy left the scene and did not report the accident to police until several hours later. The Grand Jury determined there was not enough evidence to indict him on charges of manslaughter, perjury, or driving to endanger. Actually, he didn’t get away completely clean... his driver's license was suspended for a total of 16 months. He also got a suspended sentence of two months in jail for leaving the scene of an accident.

     In aviation the first Concorde test flight was conducted in France and the Boeing 747 jumbo jet made its debut. Aviation had a tragedy that year when Prinair Flight 27, a regular passenger flight by Puerto Rican airline Prinair, between Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, crashed into a mountain near Fajardo, a suburb of San Juan, killing all 19 occupants on board. The approach controller, a trainee, was mistaken about the plane’s location and issued them incorrect instructions. 
     San Juan was the site of a major international tournament that year. The final standings were: 

1) Spassky 11.5 
2-4) Parma, Bisguier and Browne 10.0 
5) Schmid 9.5 
6-7) Donner and Larsen 9.0 
8-9) Damjanovic and Kaplan 8.5 
10) Kavalek 8.0 
11-12) R. Byrne and O'Kelly 7.5 1
3) Berrios 5.0 
14) A. Colon 2.5 
15) M. Colon 2.0 
16) Martinez 1.5 

     Naturally with that many strong players and a bottom half that was relatively weak, there were a lot of good games played as well as a lot of crushes. Today’s game features another Bisguier game. This one is his round 5 game against Anger Berrios Pagan. 
     CJS Purdy was always quick to point out that a positional evaluation is reliable only if a winning tactic can be ruled out. In this game Barrios was allowed to keep black’s King in the center, establish a strong outpost for his N on e4, placed his Q on the strong square d4 and control the e-file with his Rs. Certainly enough positional pluses to score the win, but it didn’t work out that way because in the end, Bisguier’s tactical possibilities turned out to be more dangerous.

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