Yuri Averbakh introduces the Zurich 1953 Candidates tournament for the 1954 World Chess Championship this way as
one of the most important chess competitions of the twentieth century, the candidates tournament for the world championship, held in Switzerland in the fall of 1953. In the spirit of a marathon, the tournament lasted about two months and consisted of 30 rounds. It was attended by the 15 strongest grandmasters in the world; one of them, Max Euwe, was a former champion, and two others, Vassily Smyslov and Tigran Petrosian, were future champions. Four candidates, Max Euwe, David Bronstein, Gideon Ståhlberg, and Miguel Najdorf, wrote books about this significant event. [Miguel Najdorf, in Zürich 1953: 15 Contenders for the World Chess Championship (Milford, CT: Russell Enterprises, 2012), 5)].
Andy Soltis noted in his Foreword that “Neuhausen-Zürich 1953 had more than twice as many great games as any other candidates tournament or match cycle” (Najdorf, 7). Averbakh said of the 210 games, that “quite a few” were “spectacular, interesting, and informative.” “But as it often happens, the tournament was not without curiosities. Two of them involved the American champion Samuel Reshevsky. In the game with Geller, in a winning position, he ran into a stalemate, and, in the game with Szabó, he could have been checkmated in two moves, but his opponent did not notice it” (Najdorf, 5-6).
Soltis went on to comment that “some of the games feature remarkable blunders. Szabó could have resigned after five moves as White (!) against Keres, game 18. In his memoirs he revealed how he overlookd a mate in two against Reshevsky, in game 130, because the American moved so quickly. After he counter-blundered, ‘I just sat there, shook my head, unable to make a single move for a whole hour,’ he wrote” (Najdorf, 9).
Two major tournament books, by two participants, emerged. Najdorf’s, Zürich 1953 and David Bronstein’s, Zurich InternationalChess Tournament, 1953 (1979) [1960]. Bronstein’s focus was on the games; Najdorf’s on the notes. Soltis says these “vastly different works rival one another for the title of best tournament book ever” (Najdorf, ed., 7).
