Deep in His Heart Every Player Believes He Is a Master

     1957 was the year I learned to play chess. Smyslov was World Champion and Reshevsky was the US Champion although later in the year he would lose it to the same 14-year-old kid who had captured first in the US Open that year. For how Bobby Fischer won the US Open see my post Hey Art! Give Back That Trophy!  The USSR Champ was Tahl. 
     Of all the events that escaped notice that year one of the least noticed was Hafnarfirdi in Iceland. Few games survive and the order of finish is not known, but the participants were Pal Benko, Fridrik Olafsson, Herman Pilnik, Jon Palsson, Sigurgeir Gislason and A. Finsson. 
 

Benko

   Benko was born in Amiens, France on July 14, 1928, but was raised in Hungary and at the age of 20 won the Hungarian Championship. He emigrated to the United States in 1958 after defecting following the World Student Team Championship in Reykjavík 1957. FIDE awarded him the GM title in 1958. 
     His opponent, Sigurgeir Gislason (June 17, 1925 – April 9, 2003), was an Icelandic Master. 
     It has always amazed me at the huge gap in ability that exists even in the chess elite, IMs and GMs. 

Gislason

 In this game Benko, even though he didn't actually have the GM title until the next year, makes winning against his opponent look so easy! 
     What is the difference between an IM and a GM? According to Jeremy Silman the answer is, quite simply, tactical ability. Silman explains that Experts (2000-2199) calculate badly and have a very poor understanding of positional chess. He also wrote that among Masters (2200-2399) some are just a tad better than experts while others possess reasonable calculation skills and positional understanding. According to Silman, they aren't really good, but can play well enough that they stand out. 
     Strong Masters around the 2400 level have added other things such as a better understanding of positions and their openings a better, but there are still major flaws in their play. IMs and GMs have mastered tens of thousands of chess patterns and it might take them only a glace to instantly know the essence of a position. I can confirm this from personal observation and have blogged anecdotes about watching guys like Jim Tarjan, Miguel Quinteros and Tony Miles analyzing. 
     Weaker GMs are not far above some IMs while elite GMs have great positional skills, super calculation abilities and a knowledge of openings and endings that others don't possess. 
     Not to offend his readers, Silman added that some people in any rating group are better than their rating and a Class A rating (1800 – 1999) is a high rating and players in this group are very strong, adding that it’s a big accomplishment to earn such a rating. 
     If we are being honest most of us believe, whatever our rating is, we are better than our rating would indicate. US Senior Master Eliot Hearst once defined the term “Master” as every player's secret appraisal of his own ability.
     In this game Benko, as mentioned, makes it look easy. The position after 30.Nd2 in the notes is a good one to set up on a board and try to see your way through all the lines. 
 

1955 Women's Candidate Tournament, Larissa Volpert and Folke Rogard

Volpert

     The 1956 Women's World Championship was won by Olga Rubtsova, who became the fourth women's champion. She won the 1955 Candidates Tournament but FIDE decided that instead of her playing the defending champion Elisabeth Bykova, the championship should be decided between the top three female players: Rubtsova, Bykova, and Lyudmila Rudenko, ex-champion and loser of the last title match. 
      At the time the FIDE President was Folke Rogard (July 6, 1899 – June 11, 1973), a Swedish lawyer, chess official, player and arbiter.  Rogard was born in Stockholm with the last name of Rosengren and it was with that name that he qualified as a lawyer. After a family member was charged with burglary, he changed his name to Rogard and cut all ties with his family. 
     Rogard, who could speak five languages, was vice-president of FIDE from 1947 to 1949, then succeeded Alexander Rueb as president, a post he held until succeeded by Max Euwe in 1970. He was also chairman of the Swedish Chess Federation from 1947 to 1964. Rogard was granted the International Arbiter title by FIDE in 1951.
     During his term with FIDE he was able to arrange for many high-profile events to be hosted in Sweden. Four Interzonal tournaments as well as the 1956 Student Olympiad, the 1969 World Junior Championship and the 1968 Candidates' match were all held in Sweden. Sweden also hosted the FIDE Congress of 1955. 
     Rogard achieved a lot during his tenure: formalization of the GM and IM titles in 1950; gaining control of the World Championship process, setting up world chess zones and the Interzonal and Candidates tournaments on a regular three-year cycle, starting in 1948 with the World Championship Tournament. He also reestablished the Chess Olympiads on a two-year cycle, starting in 1950. He established the World Junior Chess Championship and was instrumental in getting the international rating system established in 1970. He was also largely responsible for the famous USSR verses the Rest of the World match held in Belgrade in April of 1970. 
     He was married four times: first to Greta Santessen from 1921 to 1934; then to Gueye Rolf until 1944; then to actress Viveca Lindfors from 1944 to 1948 and finally to Ella Johansson from 1965. You can read a fascinating account of his marriage to Viveca Lindfors HERE. 

     The second place finisher at the 1955 Womens' Candidate tournament was Larissa Volpert (born March 30, 1926) is a WGM who as far as I am aware, is still alive and would be 91 years old. Born in Leningrad, she learned chess from her older brother and received chess instruction at the Leningrad Pioneers Palace. 
     In 1947, she tied for first at the Leningrad Women's Championship and played her first USSR Women's Championship in 1949 and finished equal fifth. In 1954, she won her first USSR Women's Championship. In 1958 she shared the USSR Women's Championship title, and in 1959 she won for the third time, her second outright victory. Volpert earned the Woman IM title in 1954 and the Woman GM title in 1977. 
     She has a degree in philology from Leningrad University and is Professor Emeritus of philology at the University of Tartu, Estonia. In case you're wondering, philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics. It is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. 

Graf-Stevenson

     The following game is interesting. I can't remember where I saw some rather cursory analysis by a Soviet GM (maybe Lilienthal), but going over the game with Stockfish and Komodo drew my attention to the fact that, as in many cases, the winning side did not administer a one-sided thumping that the notes often indicate. It may be that the annotator did see the possibilities for both sides in the position, but for political reasons did not mention them. After all, this game was played in the 1950s and features a Soviet player against Sonya Graf-Stevenson, an American.

Madrid 1951

     While the chess world's attention was focused on the previously mentioned world championship, there were many other interesting tournaments being played that were overshadowed by the Botvinnik-Bronstein match. 
     Major tournaments that year totaled at least 70 events. In Yugoslavia, Braslav Rabar won his country's championship for the first and only time. The RSFSR (USSR Championship) was won by Rashid Nezhmetdinov for the second year in a row. The 19th Soviet Championship was won by Keres. Ivkov won the World Junior Championship. Larry Evans won his first US championship and Miguel Najdorf took the Argentine championship. 
     There were also zonal tournaments being held...for complete details on these events see Mark Weeks article HERE. One long forgotten event was Madrid. The final standings were: 

1) Prins 12.5
2-4) Herman Steiner, Pilnik and Ossip Bernstein 11.5 
5) Toran 10.5 
6-7) Canal and Llado 10.0 
8-11) Medina, Grob, Giustolisi and Enevoldsen 9.0 
12) Fuentes 8.0 
13-14) Sanz and Perez 7.5 
15) Pomar 6.0 
16) Tramoyeres 5.0 
17) Moura 3.0 
18) Torrens 2.5 

     Going into the last round, Prins, who had lost his 16th round game to Sanz, still held a full point lead over Steiner, Pilnik and Bernstein, so their only hope was that Prins would lose to Toran which was a distinct possibility, but he won a nice Q and P ending. So, even though Steiner's nice K-side attack prevailed against Canal, Pilnik won easily against Moura when the latter contrived to lose a piece in the middlegame and Bernstein outplayed Fuentes and snagged a piece on the ending, it was impossible to catch Prins. 
     Jens Evald Enevoldsen-Elsing (September 23, 1907 – May 23, 1980) was born in Copenhagen and won the Danish Championship five times (1940, 1943, 1947, 1948, and 1960). In 1939 he shared first but lost the playoff and shared first again in 1950. He “lost” the playoff again, this time in a lottery. Enevoldsen played for Denmark eleven times in the Olympiads (1933, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1950, 1952, 1956, 1958, 1966, 1970, and 1972). He took 4th place at the Helsinki 1947 zonal. He was awarded the IM title in 1950 and was made an International Arbiter in 1960. 
     Jose Sanz Aguado (November 20, 1907 - December 14, 1969 was born in Barcelona and was the Spanish champion in 1943. Sanz' most famous legacy was that he was involved in a hoax you can read about HERE. 
 

Torres Chess Engine

     Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (December 28, 1852 – December 18, 1936) was a genius Spanish civil engineer and mathematician who is famous for, among many other things, creating wireless remote-control operation principles. 
     Born in Santa Cruz de Iguña, Cantabria, Spain his family resided for the most part in Bilbao, where his father worked as a railway engineer, although they also spent long periods in his mother's family home in the Cantabria's mountain region. 
     In Bilbao he studied to enter an advanced high school program and later spent two years in Paris to complete his studies. In 1870, his father was transferred to Madrid. The same year, Torres began studying in the Official School of the Road Engineers' Corps. He temporarily suspended his studies in 1873 to volunteer for the defense of Bilbao, which had been surrounded by Carlist troops during the Third Carlist War. Returning to Madrid, he completed his studies in 1876, fourth in his graduating class. He married in 1885 and had eight children. 
     He began his career with the same train company for which his father had worked, but immediately set out on a long trip through Europe to get to know the scientific and technical advances of the day firsthand, especially in the new area of electricity. Upon returning to Spain, he took up residence in Santander where he financed his own work and began a regimen of study and investigation that he never abandoned.
     Torres experimented with cable cars. In 1887, he constructed the first cableway to span a depression of some 130 feet. The cableway was pulled by a pair of cows. In 1907, Torres constructed the first cableway suitable for the public transportation of people in San Sebastian. 
     In 1899 he moved to Madrid and became involved in that city's cultural life. From the work he carried out in these years, the Atheaeum of Madrid created the Laboratory of Applied Mechanics of which he was named director. The Laboratory was dedicated to the manufacture of scientific instruments. That same year he entered the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences in Madrid, of which entity he was president in 1910. 
     In the early 1900s Torres learned the international language Esperanto and was an advocate of the language throughout his life. 
     In 1902 he presented to the Science Academies of Madrid and Paris the project of a new type of dirigible that would solve the serious problem of suspending the gondola by including an internal frame of flexible cables that would give the airship rigidity by way of interior pressure.  
     In 1903, Torres presented the Telekino at the Paris Academy of Science and obtained patents in France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States. The Telekino consisted of a robot that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves. 
     In 1905 he directed the construction of the first Spanish dirigible in the Army Military Aerostatics Service. It made numerous test and exhibition flights. As a result, a collaboration began between Torres and the French company Astra, which managed to buy the patent with a cession of rights extended to all countries except Spain, in order to make possible the construction of the dirigible in its country. In 1911, the construction of dirigibles known as the Astra-Torres airships was begun. Some were acquired by the French and British armies at the beginning of 1913, and were used during the First World War, principally naval protection and inspection. 
     In 1918, Torres helped design a transatlantic dirigible, but owing to financial problems, the project was delayed and it was two Britons crossed the Atlantic without stop from Newfoundland to Ireland in a Vickers Vimy twin-engine plane, in sixteen hours and twelve minutes. 
     In 1920, he entered the Royal Spanish Academy and became a member of the department of Mechanics of the Paris Academy of Science. In 1922 the Sorbonne named him an Honorary Doctor and in 1927 he was named one of the twelve associated members of the Academy. Torres died in Madrid, in the heat of the Spanish Civil War on December 18, 1936, ten days shy of his eighty-fourth birthday. 
     It has been commonly assumed that Charles Babbage’s work on a mechanical digital program-controlled computer, which he started in 1835 and pursued off and on until his death in 1871, had been completely forgotten and was only belatedly recognized as a forerunner to the modern digital computer. Torres y Quevedo was one who made fascinating contributions that deserve to be better known. 
     In 1914 and 1920 he demonstrated that all of the cogwheel functions of a calculating machine like that of Babbage could be implemented using electro-mechanical parts. His 1914 analytical machine used a small memory built with electromagnets; his 1920 machine used a typewriter to receive its commands and print its results. 
     In early 1910, Torres began to construct a chess automaton he called El Ajedrecista (The Chessplayer). The machine was able to automatically play a King and Rook endgame against King from any position, without any human intervention. This device was first publicly demonstrated in Paris in 1914, and is considered the world's first computer game. Mechanical arms moved the pieces in the prototype, but by 1920, electromagnets under the board were employed for this task. For complete details and photos on this fascinating invention visit the Cybernetic Zoo website HERE.

1951 World Championship

    
  David Bronstein was born on February 19, 1924 and was married three times, having a son by his first wife, Olga Ignatieva. His third wife was Tatiana Boleslavskaya, the daughter of Isaac Boleslavsky. Playing bold and intuitive chess, he was, from the end of World War II to the late 1950s, one of the top three players in the Soviet Union and among the five best in the world. 
     In 1951 Bronstein became the first to challenge Botvinnik who had won the title in 1948. The 24-game match was a seesaw affair between two who not only disliked each other, but had opposite styles. It ended in a 12-12 tie and Botvinnik retained the title. The outcome might have been different if Bronstein had not blundered in the sixth game when he had an easy draw or lost the 23rd game. 
     Ever since there was speculation that Bronstein was forced to lose so that Botvinnik, the favorite of the Soviet authorities, might retain the title. Bronstein denied it, saying he chose not to win.
     Bronstein would not have been acceptable champion to the Soviet government. Coming from a Jewish family and related to the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, the Bronsteins were viewed with suspicion by the Soviet authorities and on December 31, 1937 David's father, Iohonon Boruch Bronstein, was arrested as an "enemy of the people". His crime? Defending peasants against corrupt officials. He disappeared into a Gulag and was not seen again until freed seven years later because of ill-health. 
     By then the Bronstein family was living in Moscow but his father was still banned and could not live or work within the city limits. He obtained a job in a factory about 25 miles from Moscow but this was still classed as within the city limits, so he bribed the head of the local police to turn a blind eye. Dad Bronstein died in 1952. In 1955 Bronstein's mother received a letter informing her that the case against her husband was closed and that no crimes were ever committed by him.
     It was during his father's imprisonment that Bronstein established himself. Stalin had initiated his Five Year Plan for Chess with the aim of capturing the world championship from the the West. This aim was achieved in 1948 when Botvinnik won the world title in 1948, an achievement that was hailed as an example of the superiority of the Soviet system. The authorities became nervous when Bronstein became the challenger in 1951. 
     The openly anti-Semitic government found him undesirable and then there was his father's “criminal” past. Botvinnik, on the other hand, had been a perfect champion. He was a firm believer in the system, and had even sent a telegram of thanks to Stalin for providing him with inspiration after winning Nottingham, 1936. 
     In 1976, when Viktor Korchnoi defected, Bronstein was one of the few Soviet GMs who refused to sign a letter denouncing him. As punishment, Soviet officials suspended Bronstein’s monthly stipend, a wage paid to all top Soviet masters. He was also barred from competing in almost any elite tournament within the Soviet Union and from competing in the West; the ban was not lifted until the mod-1980s.
     His match with Botvinnik was tense and error-filled. In the sixth game, in a drawn position, Bronstein thought for 45 minutes before playing an appalling blunder that lost at once. In the ninth game, a complete miscalculation left Bronstein a rook behind for almost nothing, but he managed to escape with a draw. 
     After 22 games (out of the scheduled 24) Bronstein was ahead by on point and winning the title looked assured, but a loss and a draw in the last two games left the match tied and Botvinnik retained his title. 
     Many years later Bronstein wrote, "I have been asked many, many times if I was obliged to lose the 23rd game and if there was a conspiracy to stop me from taking Botvinnik's title...The only thing that I am prepared to say is that I was subjected to strong psychological pressure from various sources...I had reasons not to become the World Champion as in those times such a title meant that you were entering an official world of chess bureaucracy with many formal obligations. Such a position is not compatible with my character.”
     Bronstein claimed his goal was to show that his style of lay was just as good as Botvinnik's scientific approach. In later years he often said that he never missed holding the title of World Champion, which only lasts a few years anyway. What he regretted, he said, was not having the lifelong title of ex-World Champion. 
     In the future Bronstein kept running into the rule limiting the number of qualifiers from one nation and there was always too many countrymen ahead of him. As against Botvinnik, he also tended to cave in at the last moment. In the Interzonal at Portoroz, Yugoslavia, in 1958, a last-round defeat by the unheralded Filipino Rodolfo Tan Cardoso cost him a qualifying place and he finished in places 7-11, scoring +4 -1 =15. In the 1964 Interzonal at Amsterdam he lost to Bent Larsen. His is outstanding +10 -1 =12 was only good enough for sixth place behind Smyslov, Larsen, Spassky, Tahl and Stein. 
     In a post mortem with an English player at Hastings in 1975-76 his young opponent kept asking if he had analyzed various move to which Bronstein replied, "Young man, you do not analyze during a game; you analyze before a game and after a game. During the game, you just play." 
      Salo Flohr, who was Botvinnik’s second, recalled the adjournment of that famous 23rd game.  Flohr assumed Botvinnik had sealed the best move and spent the night analyzing the win. In the morning, Botvinnik asked Flohr to show the winning variation to his wife. Flohr was confused because Botvinnik's wife barely knew the moves. Flohr showed her the winning variations and when he went on the stage at the resumption of the game, Botvinnik told him, “You know, Salo, I sealed a different move.” 
     Flohr explained Botvinnik's strange behavior: Botvinnik expected the game to be drawn and he he was about to lose his title, but wanted his wife to think that he had a chance of winning the game. 
     Some have put forth the theory that if the match outcome was rigged then Botvinnik would have secretly (and illegally) gotten the authorities to allow him to change the inferior sealed move for the stronger one. The theory has also been put forth that Bronstein's first marriage was on the rocks and he was in love with another woman. As world champion, divorcing his first wife would have been out of the question. Also, he feared the publicity of being world champion might bring his father’s plight back to the attention of the authorities. 
      All very interesting, but there is Bronstein's famous comment to Bobby Fischer in 1960 at Mar del Plata when Fischer cried after losing a game to Spassky. Bronstein told Fischer, "Listen, they forced me to lose an entire match to Botvinnik, and I didn't cry." In a later interview Bronstein denied having said it, but eventually conceded that he may have uttered something of that nature. "Too much time has passed," he said.

Vladimir Makogonov

     Makogonov (August 27, 1904 – January 2, 1993) was from Azerbaijan and lived in Baku for most of his life.  He was awarded the IM title in 1950 and was awarded an honorary GM title in 1987. He retired from competitive play in the 1950s. 
     Makogonov never became well known outside the Soviet Union, but was highly respected in the country as a player and coach. He helped Smyslov prepare for his 1957 World Chess Championship match against Botvinnik, trained Vladimir Bagirov and on Botvinnik's recommendation, became one of Kasparov's first coaches. 
     He was one of the world's strongest players in the 1940s: Chessmetrics calculates his highest historical rating as 2735 in October 1945, and his highest historical world rank as fifth in July 1945. 
     His tournament results included a tie for third place at Leningrad–Moscow 1939, second place at Sverdlovsk 1943. In 1942, he defeated Salo Flohr in a twelve-game match held in Baku by a score of 7½–4½. He played on Board 9 in the 1945 USSR–USA radio match, beating Abraham Kupchik 1½–½. 
     As a player, Makogonov was noted for his positional style and he made several contributions to opening theory; the Makogonov Variation in the King's Indian, the Grünfeld and the Tartakower System in the QGD. 
     His debut in the USSR championship was in 1927 where, along with Botvinnik, he was awarded the title of Soviet Master. In 1943 he was awarded the Soviet Honored Master title.
     His best championship performances were: fourth in 1936, a tie for fourth in 1939 and a tie for fifth in 1944. 
     A math teacher by profession, Makogonov first made a name for himself in the trade union tournaments and city championships in Baku. He won the champion of Azerbaijan five times from 1947 to 1952 and played in eight USSR Championships between 1927 and 1947, his best result being fourth in 1937 and a tie for fourth place in 1939. 
     In the following game from the Leningrad/Moscow in 1939 he defeated Reshevsky in fine style. The tournament was organized on fairly short notice. The Soviet press referred to it as a training tournament and a preliminary to the regular Russian Championship. The first half was held in Leningrad and the second half was held in Moscow during the month of January. Salo Flohr's victory was a surprise as he had pretty much been written off as a top player after his last place finish at AVRO a few months before. It is believed that Panov may have withdrawn at some point. 

1) Flohr 12.0 
2) Reshevsky 10.5 
3-5) Lilienthal, Makogonov, Levenfish and Ragozin 10.0 
6-7) I. Rabinovichand Belavenets 9.5 
8-9) Alatortsev and Kan 9.0 
10) Konstantinopolsky 8.5 
11-12) Smyslov and Keres 8.0 
13) Goglidze 7.5 14) Tolush 7.0 
16) Romanovsky 6.0 
17) Bondarevsky 5.0 
18) Panov 3.5 
 

Maria Teresa Mora Iturralde

     The November 23, 1921 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle had an article titled Cuban Girl Chess Expert Holds Own With Champion. Her name was Maria Teresa Mora, a school girl from Havana. 
     Mora (October 15, 1902 – October 3, 1980) was playing a match against Jose Van der Gutch who had recently won a tournament at the Havana Chess Club. They had played five games at the time of the article and despite a poor start, Miss Mora had evened the score with each having 2.5 points. She drew the first game, but then lost the next two and it looked like she was going down in flames, but then she won the next two. 
     The match had created a lot of excitement and according to the article, the game given below, her second victory, was accompanied by much shouting and “bedlam was let loose” because she was everyone's favorite. Van der Gutch was a gentleman and very courteous towards his opponent, but gave her no breaks. The club's rooms were packed and calls were coming in from all over town with inquiries as to the progress of the games. Even the Capablanca-Lasker match had not created as much excitement. 
     The excitement the match generated was simply because the fact that a young teenage girl was meeting a “full grown gentleman” on equal terms...a rarity in those days because women had not yet distinguished themselves in chess. 
     Born in Havana, Mora, at the age of 14, was the only person known to have studied under Capablanca. She was also a gifted musician and received violin and mandolin lessons, giving a concert with them in 1921. 
     In 1922 she won the Dewar Cup of the Havana Chess Club, which at the time was considered equivalent to Cuban National Championship. She was the only woman to have ever won the Cuban championship and was Cuban Woman's Champion from 1938 until she retired from competitive play in 1960. 
     Capablanca wrote about the lessons in My Chess Career, but did not identify Mora:
 “There was in Havana a young girl of from 12 to 14 years of age who interested me a great deal. Not only was she intelligent and modest in every respect but, what is more to the point, she played chess quite well (I believe that today she probably is the strongest lady player in the world, though only 15 or 17 years old). I offered to give her a few lessons before I sailed. My offer was accepted, and I decided to teach her something of the openings and the middle-game along general principles and in accordance with certain theories which I had had in my mind for some time but which I had never expounded to anybody. In order to explain and teach my theories I had to study, so it came about that, for the first time in my life, I devoted some time to the working of the openings. I had the great satisfaction of finding that my ideas were, as far as I could see, quite correct. Thus it happened that I actually learned more myself than my pupil, though I hope that my young lady friend benefited by the dozen or so lessons that I gave her. It came about that I thus strengthened the weakest part of my game, the openings, and that I also was able to prove to my own satisfaction the great value of certain theories which I had evolved in my own mind.” 

     In December of 1921 Capablanca wrote a letter to the London Times in which he said, “I hope the committee (responsible for organizing London, 1922) will also consider a proposition which I have to make with regard to the Women’s Tournament, and that is that in some way they leave open the possibility of the participation in that tournament of the young Cuban girl, Senorita Maria Teresa Mora. The young lady is only some 17 years old, and yet I believe her to be the equal of any woman player. Her participation would add enormous interest to the tournament and would cost the committee nothing, as I would obtain here the necessary funds for her journey.” 

     She was a Women's World Championship Challenger at Buenos Aires in 1939 where she tied for seventh and eighth place (Vera Menchik won). This was her first appearance in this event because in order to participate a player's country had to be a member of FIDE and Cuba did not join until 1939. Out of 20 players she scored only 1.5 points against the top ten finishers, but rolled up 9.5 points against the bottom finishers. 
     She also participated in the 1949/50 event. Lyudmila Rudenko of the Soviet Union won convincingly, scoring +9 -1 =5. Her single loss was to 14th (out of 16) Mona May Karff of the US. Mora scored +4 -7 =4 to finish in a tie with Jozsa Langos of Hungary for tenth place. Mora did manage a draw with second place finisher Valentina Belova of the Soviet Union who was tied with Elisaveta Bykova also of the Soviet Union. Her finish was hurt by losses to the two last place players. She was awarded the Women's IM title in 1950. 

     The first time Mora appeared in the foreign press was in 1917 when the American Chess Bulletin published an article entitled Havana Has Another Prodigy. Although her exact age was unknown at the time, the article claimed that she was twelve years old and that she first learned how to play chess at the age of eight. Her father was not a chess player, but she had a brother, Albert, who would occasionally take her to the Club de Ajedrez. 
     On the occasion of the letter to the ACB, a correspondent named Edward Everett, a lawyer from Seattle, Washington and a fairly strong player, described how she had won the school championship of Cuba two years after learning how to play. In 1915 she won the Havana province scholar championship. Along with her brother she also received a prize given by the Good Companion Club of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to five Cuban players who could solve chess problems in the least time. Her exploits were mentioned in Havana newspapers and there had been appeals to the Havana City Council to make special provisions for her education. 

     At the urging of club members Everett played Mora and described her as being a player that did not induce fear when he saw her...she was frail, intellectual...a little lady in curls and a long, old-fashioned dress. After meeting her, Everett asked what odds she wanted and was amused when she declined. Everett played her seven games, winning but one while losing three and drawing three. He observed that she did not play skittles, but analyzed every move carefully and played with the “confidence of a veteran.” 
     Mora worked for the Ministry of Education and played first board on their chess team.