Hastings 1949/50

Szabo

     The 25th Hastings Christmas Chess Festival was held from December 29th, 1949 to January 7th, 1950. 
     Chess Review magazine had belittled the status of the previous tournament (1948/49) by pointing out that the tournament had reached its peak in 1934/35 when Capablanca, Euwe, Botvinnik, Flohr and Lilienthal played. 
     Chess Review opined that English chess fans must have felt like underprivileged children because the 1948/49 tournament had slipped to the status of local competition with a “sparse leavening of second rate foreign players.” Harsh! 
     The magazine went on to say the best of these second rate foreign players was the “stringy, hollow cheeked Nicolas Rossolimo, a Greek born in Russia and living in France.” The magazine also claimed that his four wins and five draws “in this mediocre field” showed that he was no world beater. 

Rossolimo

     Curious about just how good Rossolimo was in 1950, I went to Chessmetrics and discovered he was ranked, at 2654, number 23 in the world four different months between the January 1950 and the May 1951 rating lists. Thus he was in the neighborhood of players like, among others, Averbakh, Bogoljubow, Lilienthal, Salo Flohr, Bondarevsky, Taimanov, Euwe, Pachmann, Rossetto, Barcza, Ragozin etc. He remained in the top 50 until the mid-1950s. Maybe he wasn’t a world beater, but he was pretty good! 
     Chess Review also had biting words for Paul Schmidt (6th place +1 -1 =7) and Robert Wade (8th place +1 -3 =5) stating that both had “failed to distinguish themselves.” 
     The magazine was especially critical of Schmidt, pointing out that his moment of glory came in 1937 when he finished ahead of Keres, Stahlberg and Flohr in an Estonian tournament, but in this tournament “proved unequal to the chore of winning games...but was at least able to draw them.” Of poor Wade the magazine commented he “was not any too good at that.” 

Schmidt in later years

     The criticism of Schmidt seems unfair because at the time he was working on earning his PhD in chemistry from Heidelberg University which he got in 1951. After receiving his degree he moved to Canada and from there to Philadelphia and later a place that’s hardly a chess Mecca, Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he made contributions to electrochemistry and anodic oxidation of silicon, was expert in neutron activation analysis, and published many papers, till his retirement in 1982. So, it would appear that at Hastings, Schmidt was on his way to all but giving up a career in chess. Chessmetrics ranks him Number 9 in the world 15 different months between the November 1942 and August 1944 with a 2600+ rating. 
      The 1949/50 event was an improvement over the previous Hastings.  In addition to the winner of the previous event (Rossolimo) there were former world champion Max Euwe and Hungarian GM Laszlo Szabo who had been a top European player since he burst onto the chess scene in 1935 when at the age of 18 he won the Hungarian Championship. This was Szabo’s third win at Hastings. 
     Also playing was 17-year old Larry Evans, who was in those days described as a prodigy. Larry M. Evans (March 22, 1932 – November 15, 2010) won or shared the US Championship five times and the US Open four times. He wrote a long-running syndicated chess column and wrote or co-wrote more than twenty chess books. 
     Evans first won his first championship in 1951 ahead of Samuel Reshevsky, and his last in 1980 when he tied with Walter Browne and Larry Christiansen. He was awarded the IM title in 1952 and the GM title in 1957. 
     Evans was born in Manhattan and learned much about the game by playing for ten cents an hour on 42nd Street in New York City. At age 14, he tied for 4th–5th place in the Marshall Chess Club championship. The next year he won it outright, becoming the youngest Marshall champion at that time. He finished equal second in the 1947 US Junior Championship and in 1948, at the age of 16, he played in the US Championship and tied for eighth place with 11.5-7.5.
     Evans tied with Arthur Bisguier for first place in the US Junior Championship in 1949. Evans didn’t have much respect for his mother and didn’t treat her very well and Bisguier didn’t like it...that is until he met the woman. Bisguier didn’t elaborate on what the problem with Mrs. Evans was.

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[Event "Hastings 1949/50"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "1950.1.7"]
[Round "9"]
[White "Nicolas Rossolimo"]
[Black "Larry M. Evans"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteELO "?"]
[BlackELO "?"]

%Created by Caissa's Web PGN Editor
{C53: Giuoco Piano sidelines} 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 {Rossolimo was one of
the very few who played this regularly and he had many fine wins with it.}
3... Bc5 4. c3 {The point of 4. c3 is to play d4 quickly but a third defender
of d4 is required. The disadvantage is that 4.c3 fails to develop a piece, it
also takes away the Ns best square, which in turn makes the P on e4 a little
weaker also. Black has some tricky replies. If he does nothing active, like
4...d6, then white grabs the center with 5. d4.} 4... Qe7 {This rare sideline
(usual is 4... Nf6) gets a thumbs down from the engines.} 5. d4 {This involves
a P-sac.} 5... exd4 {Rare as black almost always plays 5...Bb6, but like his
previous move, Stockfish doesn't like it, but it has good results.} 6. O-O d3
{A good move in that it doesn't aid white's development. Sermek,D
(2517)-Mrkonjic,N (2285)/ Bizovac CRO 2000 continued 7...d6, but black's best
is probably 7...d5. In either case white has an active position.} 7. e5 h6 8.
b4 Bb6 9. a4 a5 {This opening is out of the past: Leonhardt, P-Marco,G/Ostende
1905 continued 10.b5 Nd8 11.Ba3 and white is better, but he eventually lost.
Rossolimo's next move is an improvement.} 10. Ba3 axb4 11. cxb4 {White can be
considered to be winning here, but hsi next move voluntarily walking into a
pin only makes matters worse. Somewhere Evans' whole opening has gone wrong.}
11... Nxb4 12. Nc3 Bc5 13. Qb3 Ra5 14. Bxb4 Bxb4 15. Nd5 Rxd5 {The only move
otherwise white simply takes on b4.} 16. Bxd5 c6 17. a5 h5 18. Bxf7+ Qxf7 19.
Qxb4 {Superficially it looks like balck has some compensation for the
exchange, but his K is in mortal danger as Rossolimo demonstrates.} 19... Ne7
20. Ng5 Qg6 21. Ne4 Nf5 22. Rfe1 {There is no satisfactory way to meet the
threatened Nd6+} 22... Rf8 23. Nd6+ Nxd6 24. exd6+ Kf7 {White no begins a K
hunt.} 25. Qc4+ Kf6 26. Re3 Rh8 27. Rf3+ { Not that it matters, but 27.Re7
mates in 9 moves.} 27... Ke5 28. Qc5+ Ke6 29. Re1+ { Facing mate next move,
Evans resigned. A forceful win by Rossolimo.} 1-0