Tbilisi 1949. The 'Arrival' Of Petrosian And Geller.

Good afternoon everyone. I am going to try to limit my chat here, as there is a lot in the game notes for you.

This week I have been browsing The extraordinary Sergei Voronkov's book 'Masterpieces and Dramas of The Soviet Championships. vol 3. I don't need to tell you it's wonderful - it's Voronkov!!.

Material reproduced from it with the permission of Elk and Ruby publishers, with my usual humble thanks.

A couple of pages caught my eye - regarding the 17th Championships, back in 1949.

I have known a background story from the event for years. Two Candidate Masters qualified for the finals, where they had somewhat different results! Petrosian started horribly - five losses in a row, including a 13 mover in round one! Geller, on the other hand was fighting for first place all through.

It wasn't in my head that they qualified via the same semi-final. My long time readers will know that I love those USSR Championship semi-finals. Seriously tough tournaments!

The Voronkov pages mentioned.

So, a quick look at Tbilisi 1949. Limited time here so will just throw the material onto the page!

The Table, via rusbase - as usual with their crosstables, right click and open in new window - they don't work well here.

I grabbed some books off the shelves for some contemporary notes which I have included here, with my own thoughts added, and downloaded the pgn and went through a lot of the games. I suggest if you have the time you should download the pgn and do the same - lots of great chess!

So, six games and a few pictures.

I love the forgotten, so two games from obscure players to start with, then four from more famous names.

Konstantin Klaman 

was a name I recognised, as a devoted student of Paul Keres. He played in the 1947 final where he beat Keres and Bondarevsky. He got away well in Tbilisi, but then fell away. A nice game from his leap out of the starting blocks. It brought back some happy memories for me with regard to the opening.

A player who's name I did not recognise at all was one Akaki Pirtskhlava, from Georgia - probably on his home ground. As you can see from the table, he retired from the tournament early on, but by then he had beaten the winner! He isn't in the Voronkov results list, because his results were not counted, I presume.

So, let's get to some games of players who's names you will recognise,

Let's start with the winner - the square-jawed young man pictured in a cartoon on the time.

This game is one I know from my late friend Bernhard Cafferty's translation of Geller's 'At The Chessboard'. ( there is a sub-text to the Ukranian original of that book being published!! One for another time)

On to Petrosian. He played some nice games in this tournament. There are notes to a couple of them in Shekhtman's two volume collection of his games, so I chose this one - always nice to have contemporary notes to work with. The finish reminds me of the olden times 'Master vs. Amateur' gambit games. I had originally intended this to be the 'feature game' - hence the extensive notes - but changed my mind!

A great cartoon to link that game to the next one.

I love Kholmov both as a player and as a person! My kind of guy in both respects. This game is one I knew from the Black Book volume on him which was the primary source for one of my previous blogs.

His opponent is best known as Petrosian's early trainer, who taught him about Niemzowitsch, amongst other things. Kasparian also played in this tournament, as he did in Parnau - my last blog!

And while I am there, a wonderful picture including Ebralidze and Both Makogonovs I wish I had known about it back when I did my Makogonov post!. Well, when you write about chess history these days, new things appear on-line every day. A few of my old blogs could be completely rewritten in the light of later discoveries.

So, finally on to the 'feature game'. Nehzmetdinov was one of those players who's tournament results were generally nothing spectacular, but who was capable of playing the most incredible chess. In this tournament he had a distinctly average result, but one game found it's way into my prized copy of his best games. He didn't give much attention to it there, but hopefully presenting it here with give you some genuine chess pleasure.

A picture of two of the players in this tournament taken two years later in another USSR Championships semi-final. The game was a masterpiece on Makogonov's part.

And a little picture of another of the forgotten to finish - from the Voronkov book.
''The tournament in Tbilisi proved to be the last for the talented master Viktor Andreevich
Vasiliev: he died in 1950 at the age of just 34 from wounds that he suffered at the
front during WWII… This photo was taken during the Leningrad championship of 1940
where he shared 2nd to 4th place. Photo by M. Volkovysky from his archive. ''