Soviet Cheating in FIDE Competition: 1952 Stockholm Interzonal

Wow, that was really stupid, I'm still reading it over and over and laughing. Congratulations!

 

In poker, players found to be soft playing against another opponent are considered colluding.  You may recieve a penalty, could be disqualified, and I know of someone who was banned from a casino for soft play "collusion". 

The tour de France is a team sport, that match was not a team sport or game for those that don't consider it a sport.

The Russians considered themselves a team.

FM: I was talking about Fan's post.

Seems pretty simple that ultimately most Soviet players put country above personal considerations and would unite foremost as a team against the rest of the world. Think for example if one country had around half the teams playing football, don't you suppose those teams would be very likely to work together to get as favorable and as many teams as possible to play for and win the World Cup?

There was more considerations with the Soviet players than just chess itself and their individuality and accomplishments. Botvinnik was a strong promoter of the State, and wanted chess to be a display to further the State if I understand his history correctly. He wasn't alone in that. I think the situation then only made for the feats of non Soviets that much more impressive- Fischer in particular. For it was Fischer who pointed out the defect in such a strategy, that while Fischer may have been out numbered by the Soviets, if he only had to play them one at a time in a match format he could beat them. One game, one match, one player at a time, until he had beaten them all.

Nobody cared if the Swedes or Bulgarians acted as a team, or if the US players did. In 1952, the best players in the world were almost all Soviets. In the 1953 Zurich tournament, nine of the top eleven were from the Soviet Union. Szabo, Gligoric and Stahlberg,  the three who were allowed in by Fide finished 12th, 13th and 15th in a 15 player field. 

FIDE did learn from these tournaments and eventually went to matches. But, let's take a look at the players who qualified through the tournament system. David Bronstein, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, and Tigran Petrosian proved to be the best candidates. 

And now we're using the tournament system again. I have a problem with the tournament system because it usually means that the winner is the one who does best against the lower half of the table.

I'd much rather see matches. Imagine a twelve game Kramnik-Carlsen Candidates final match! Of course such matches are financially infeasible, which is why we now have Candidates Tournaments again.

It seems to me that matches could work if players played their matches in one venue and lowered the prize funding significantly for the candidates matches. Candidate matches should be mostly about chess and determining the best player to challenge the reigning world champion. You can get your money in the World Championship match or at the various other tournaments. even if you cut it down to 6 game matches, I think it'd be better than a tournament format.

I'm guessing most people have never watched the qualification runs for the Olympic 10K or 5K. The best athletes form a pack, trade off who leads, conserve energy, and just coast into the next round. It's not cheating. 

This was a group qualification tournament. The goal was to finish in the top five. The real fight came in the Zurich 1953 Candidates' Final where drawing against the others wouldn't be enough, and there was just one winner. In that tournament, Reshevsky had no wins and 9 draws out of 12 games against the top, while Smyslov had 5 wins and 7 draws.

And yes, Jamie has of course claimed there was cheating in that tournament too. After all, the American didn't win.

Yes, some of the Soviets who participated at Zurich - most notably Bronstein - admited the collusion occurred there as well, primarily to stop Reshevsky.

Some of the Soviets did think that way. Those who did not (i.e. Bronstein, Keres, Korchnoi, Spassky) did so at their own risk.

Senior-Lazarus_Long wrote:

The Russians considered themselves a team.

According to the ChessMetrics website, from Jan 1950 to Dec 1954, the top five players in the world, trading off at time as to who was the highest rated, were Bronstein, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Reschevsky, and Keres. An occasional interloper, such as Najdorf or Kotov would pop into the top five from time to time, but only the first-mentioned ever occupied the #1 ranking.

 I knew.  Don't you recognize CC (you) in that caricature?

FM: Yeah I did (ah old age!) but still thought you thought I was saying it to your post

You are trying to apply modern anti-drawing rules ex post facto and slander these players.  Nothing they did was unacceptable at the time.

Today, Yasser Seirawan was talking about the psychological problem of facing the Soviet players. He didn't mention anything about the Soviet players being  unsporting or "cheating". He talked about them being the best players and having a huge psychological advantage. He compared that to the game that Carlsen played against the Russian Champion, Tomashevsky.

You'd never see a top Soviet player being a spectator to his opponent's brilliancy the way Tomashevsky was so completely outplayed by Carlsen. The Soviets were the best players in the world, and usually a class above the best western players.

Collusion has always been "against the rules" and unethical.  When done on a massive scale, as the Soviets practiced, it affected championships and championship qualifiers - until Fischer came along to bust up the Soviet hegemony.

It is too bad Fischer did not continue to play.

The Soviet School did its best to make sure no Western players broke though to threaten their position.

Reschevsky, for instance, was probably the strongest player in the world in the first half of the 1950s.  If he had been supported by the State, who knows how far he might have gone?

The Soviets used chess in predator-like fashion, undercutting Western professionals who tried to make chess their livelihood.  Their concern was the propaganda value of success in chess - and it still resonates today.

Thank you for showing us your bias. 

According to chessmetrics, Reshevsky was the highest rated player for a couple months during the war, and for a couple months in 1953. Otherwise, the top players in the early 1950s were Botvinnik, Bronstein, Smyslov, with Keres poking in occasionally too.