The Moscow Championship 1947. Simagin, Bronstein and Ravinsky.
Afternoon Everyone. Lots of nice chess today, so one to dip in and out of!
Recently my friend Kamalakanta posted a nice blog - https://www.chess.com/blog/kamalakanta/a-kings-indian-lesson-from-bronstein I added a game between the loser of the game featured there - Ravinsky - and Simagin. So we have three players in the 1946 Moscow Championships - Bronstein, Ravinsky and Simagin. Well, here's a thing. The following year's Moscow Championship saw the three of them share first place and end up in a play-off.
It was possibly Grigory Ravinsky's
best result. As I say, the Moscow championships back then were as strong as national championships anywhere else in the world.
The relevant tables - taken from rusbase, which don't come across well on the chess.com software, so right click, save as, and take a proper look, or magnify the page!.
Half a dozen games from the main tournament to illustrate how the players got to share first place. A couple of losses for an interesting chess figure in his own right - Ilya Kan.
All great players have particular pawn structures in which they are very strong - some are outstanding on both sides of those positions. Bronstein just had a great natural feel for positions in the French and the Caro Kann where Black takes on e4, and was a master on both sides of the positions. A case in point.
Ravinsky liked to attack the King - here his 18th move makes it all happen - Panov has run away with his King, and it's still in the firing line!
Another loss by one of my favourite 'victims' Zagoriansky! Picture from 1937.
As it turned out, Simagin
managed to win - with Black - the most significant game of the main tournament,
Sadly we don't have all the games from the play-offs - for example Ravinsky's two wins against Simagin - his overall record against him was terrible! - are lost forever, but I will post what we have.
As said, Simagin had a great overall score against Ravinsky.
This is a master at work. I will let you analyse this one for yourselves - feel free to post your thoughts! It didn't make it into Simagin's own best games collection btw.
This game did make that collection. Pure Simagin. He had this skill for making sacrifices and then just following up with quiet positional moves.
So, to the clashes between Bronstein
and Simagin. Firstly the draw - just for the record.
This next one made it into Bronstein's '200 Open Games' with this introductory comment.
O.K. We don't have the full score of this next game. As usual with games between these two friends both play to win - I think that they inspired each other - with each trying to 'out-create' the other. Clearly the play to this point was far from ordinary, and Simagin's conception is really quite wonderful.
O.K. Feature game last, as I do. What a battle!!
How strong was Simagin at that point? VERY!! Another crosstable from that year.
Having said that winning the Moscow Championship back in those days was as good as winning the championship of other whole countries, the next year he destroyed the second strongest chess nation in the world - Hungary - in the first half of the 'Moscow -- Budapest' match, with 7/8 ( he scored 5/8 in the second half).
Moscow champions, 1947.
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