Same Player, Different Luck

     Here it is Friday and we were blessed to have survived another ugly winter storm that moved from the SW to the NE and stretched 2,180 miles from Maine to Texas. In places it was over 750 miles wide. I think it was a variation of a Panhandle Hook. Shades of the February 2nd storm! 

     As temperatures rose to 55 degrees this one brought, fortunately, only 1 inch of rain, not the 1-1/2 to 2 inches predicted, but it came on top of 10-12 inches of melting snow. Later in the day the temperature began dropping into the teens and the rain changed to freezing rain and then snow. We woke up this morning with 2-3 inches of snow on top of a layer of ice.   

     Thankfully, it was not as bad as what happened to the people in Petropolis, Brazil. Just over 10 inches of rain fell within three hours on Tuesday (almost as much as during the previous 30 days combined) and set off mudslides and floods in a mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro state, killing multiple people, washing away homes, cars and everything else in their path. 

     Petropolis was the site of the 1973 Interzonal tournament that was won by Henrique Meking. Second place was a tie between Lajos Portisch, Lev Polugayevsky and Ewfim Geller. Portisch and Polugayevsky qualified for the Zonal when they eliminated Geller in the playoff in Portoroz. 

 

     Chess Life editor Burt Hochberg was there and wrote that while he and his wife were in Rio de Janeiro he was reading a newspaper chess article and noticed the name of a participant he had never heard of...somebody the article referred to as Mequinho when the headlines screamed MEQUINHO BEATS RESHEVSKY! 

     Mequinho was Henrique Mecking, Brazil's boy wonder, the strongest player on the South American continent and likely the best player South America ever produced. Mecking won the tournament, as Hochberg put it, "...al1 by himself. He did it cleanly, simply by playing better than anyone else." 

     It was a different story for old timers like Smyslov, Bronstein, Reshevsky and Keres; sadly, their star was fading. 

     Poor Reshevsky! Against Soviet player Vladimir Savon, Reshevsky had a forced mate when, in his usual time pressure, he played the last move of the time control, 40.Qxg6 mate...or it would have been a mate, but, alas Reshevsky simply forgot that Savon had a B lurking on b1 and so after Savon snapped off the Queen it wasn't mate at all...Reshevsky had simply blundered away his Q and so he resigned.

     However, in his game against Yugoslav (now Serbian) GM Ljubomir Ljubojevic, Reshevsky didn't miss the mate. Ljubojevic (born 1950) won the Yugoslav Championship in 1977 (tied) and 1982. During his career he defeated just about every top player there was.

ChessBase

Samuel Reshevsky–Ljubomir Ljubojevic1–0Petropolis InterzonalPetropolis Interzonal1973Stockfish 14.1

Modern Defence: Averbakh Variation 1.d4 g6 In the Modern Defense, or the Robatsch Defense, white is allowed to occupy the center with Ps on d4 and e4 and then black will try to undermine this ideal center without attempting to occupy it. 2.c4 g7 3.e4 d6 4.c3 The Averbakh System. d7 It's a King's Indian after 4...Nf6 5.f3 e5 6.e2 c6 7.0-0 h6 8.b1 8.d5 c5 9.d2 f6 10.b4 f7 11.e1 cxb4 12.a4 a5 13.a3 bxa3 14.d3 is equal. Janssen,R (2503)-Martens,M (2377)/Netherlands 2019 8...0-0 9.b4 f5 Energetic, but risky. 9...a6 10.d5 c5 11.a3 f6 12.d3 f7 and black is badly cramped. Korotylev,A (2603)-Lanchava,T (2366)/Wijk aan Zee 2005 9...exd4 10.xd4 e5 11.b5 h4 12.bxc6 bxc6 13.b3 g4 14.f3 e6 and white is much better, but in Portisch,L (2640)-Meleghegyi,C (2355)/Hungary 1979 black managed to survive and hold on for a draw. 10.g5 e8 11.d5 f7 12.dxc6 bxc6 13.c1 b7 14.exf5 gxf5 15.h4 e4 16.b3 e6 Obviously defending the f-Pawn, but Rershevsky's next move is a surprise. 17.xf5 xf5 The win of the piece is very temporary. 18.g4 g6 19.xd7 So, white has won a P. e5 20.h3 f3 21.e2 d3 22.f4 A cute little tactical shot. xf4 23.xd3 exd3 24.xf4 c8 25.xc8 xc8 The exchanges have left white with an excellent ending because the P on d3 will eventually fall. 26.e1 f8 27.d2 f5 28.g3 d5 Wrong P push! 28...c5 29.bxc5 dxc5 Even here white is considerably better. 29.c5 h5 30.h4 Preventing even the hint of counterplay by ...h4 d4 31.g2 Here or on the next few moves Reshevsky could have reached an even more favorable ending with b5 followed by the advance of his d-Pawn. Instead, he spends considerable time shuffling his pieces around gradually improving their position. f7 32.f3 h7 This turns out to be a bad position for the K, but even a better move would not have saved the game 33.d1 e5 34.xe5 xe5 35.xd3+ g8 36.f4 b2+ 37.d2 xb4 The gme is over after Reshevsky's next move. 38.g6+ f8 39.h6+ g7 40.e2 xc5 41.h8+ f7 42.e8+ f6 43.e6# 1–0

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