Stein Blackjacks Portisch in 21
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NM GreenLaser on Sat, 04/25/2009 at 4:20pm.
Leonid Stein was born near Lvov, Ukraine, then in the Soviet Union, on Nov. 12, 1934 and died July 4, 1973. At the time, Stein was a world class player. He won the Soviet Armed Forces Championship in 1955. He became a master as a result of his 3rd place finish in the Ukrainian Championship of 1959. In 1961, he was 3rd in the Soviet Championship. This led to his participation in the Stockholm Interzonal of 1962. Stein won the Soviet Championship in 1963, 1965, and 1966/7. At that time, theses events were among the strongest of the year. To win the 1963 title, he had to come ahead of Spassky and Kholmov in the playoff. Stein also won two of the strongest tournaments of the era, Moscow 1967 and the Alekhine Memorial in Moscow 1971. In the latter, he was tied for 1st with Karpov. Stein did well in his games with world champions with only Botvinnik scoring plus one against him. Stein's problem was his failure to get past the interzonals into the candidates matches. This was complicated by the rule limiting the number of participants of any single nation, which amounted to a limit on the Soviet Union. If Ukraine had been independent then, Stein could have benefited. His opponent in this game is Lajos Portisch, who was born in Hungary on April 4, 1937. Portisch was also a world class player. He was a candidate eight times and his nation's champion eight times. For more of Stein's life and games, I suggest the following: 1. "Leonid Stein: Master of Attack," by Raymond Keene (1976 and 1988), 2. "Leonid Stein: Master of Risk Strategy," by Lazarev and Gufeld (2001), 3. "Chess Secrets: The Great Attackers," by Colin Crouch (2009). Crouch includes three attackers, Kasparov, Tal, and Stein. and 4. Kasparov's five volume work on the world champions which includes non-champions. Stein and Portisch are in Volume 3.
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