Romanian Chess History (1) - Timisoara 1988: World Youth Chess Championship

One of the biggest chess events organized by Romania was the World Youth Chess Championship, hosted by the beautiful city of Timisoara, in the summer of 1988.

The organization of an event like World Chess Championships, at any level, demand a lot of resources, and put a lot of pressure before, during and after the games are finished.

Romania was chosen to host the 1988 edition, offering a good opportunity for a talented generation of local players to prove their strenghth at home.

A lot of young fighters were ready to begin the competitions, and as far as I remember many training camps were schedule before the tournaments, because romanian juniors and and Romanian Chess Federation wanted to win as many medals as possible with this ocasion.

The expectation were met, because romanian players won 6 medals (1 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze), more than Soviet Union with 4 medals (3 gold and 1 silver).

Tournaments were really strong, as we can see from the list of the winners:

Boys U12: GM Judith Polgar (champion) with GM Marcin Kaminski and GM Dieter Nisipeanu coming in fourth and fifth place.

Boys U16: GM Alexei Shirov (champion), followed by GM Ilya Gurevich and GM Joel Lautier.

If you want to feel the atmosphere, the footage below, with romanian comentary may be a pleasant video.

IM/WGM Corina Peptan (2392 now) won the gold medal in the girls  U10 category with 10,5 points out of 11 rounds (!!!) marking her entrance into the World Championships Hall of Fame.

WGM Luminita Cosma (2311 now) won the silver medal in girls U16, with 9 points/11, along with IM/WGM Alisa Galliamova (2438 now) who scored 10 points/11, and was the champion of the category and WGM Ana Maria Botsari (2222 now) far behind with 7,5 points/11.

Other medalists were GM Gabriel Schwartzman (2533 now) who took the silver in the U12 category, IM Francisc Nemeth (2448 now) the winner of bronze at U10, GM Andrei Istratescu (2551 now), third place at U14 and Eleonora Balint, last place on the podium of girls U14.

GM Andrei Istratescu shared the place with GM Gata Kamski, the winner of the silver following the tie-breaks.

Now I invite to replay some of the games from the competitions and see how chess was played by youngsters 32 years ago