Soviet Cheating in FIDE competition: Zurich 1953

JamieDelarosa: Others have already responded, but I have to say that you take your conspiracy theories to laughable lengths. The Hague wasn't home advantage for Euwe, but Moscow was for the Soviets? Euwe was never in contention for anything but last place, for the simple reason that he was completely off form and a decade past his peak (already the AVRO tournament in 1938 showed that he was no longer a serious contender to win back the World Championship). As likely as not, the border guards took his opening preparation because they thought it secret code (this has happened to other chess players). Ree's outline of the incident basically points to this being the case.

As for the peak strength of players, long before Elo confirmed it with this calculation, the accepted wisdom was that players reach their competitive peak around the age of 32 and then keep roughly that level for approx. another ten years. After that most players tail off considerably.

fabelhaft: Throughout his career, Euwe mixed very good results with indifferent ones (this happened especially when he played a series of events). As SmyslovFan points out, he did very well aged 52 in the first half of the 1953 Candidates, and he also had several other good results after 1948. In 1952, he shared 2nd place with Najdorf at the Wertheim Memorial (half a point behind Reshevsky). In 1955–56, he crushed Donner 7–3 (no losses) in a match for the Dutch Championship. He won Hoogovens (Wijk aan Zee) in 1958, and in the Munich Olympiad he scored +7 =3 –1 on board 1. It's probably unfair to say that Euwe's strength dropped more than most.

tygxc: Keres wasn't prevented from winning the Curaçao 1962 Candidates. Up to the penultimate round he was in the lead. Then in round 27, he suffered a defeat at the hands of Pal Benko, most likely a case of tiredness as well as nerves (he got into trouble already in the opening) – a win in that game would more or less have assured him of first place. Throughout his career (already long before he became a Soviet citizen), Keres suffered blowouts at crucial junctures, something which he himself was the first person to point out. Moreover, the person who probably knew Keres better than anyone else, his wife, said that the reason Keres never became world champion was that he lacked the ruthless streak necessary.

Generally speaking, we should not assume things didn't go one way or the other because of pressure from above – because things were rarely as straight-forward as that. Stalin was a rabid anti-semite, yet a Jew won the 1948 tournament (instead of the ethnic Russian Smyslov). The 1951 World Championship was contested not only by two Jews, but one of them, Bronstein, had a father who'd spent ten years in the Gulags. It's hard to think of a more 'unsuitable' challenger in Stalin's Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, there was a constant jockeying for position, because tournaments abroad meant stipends and the opportunity to win hard currency cash prizes. That, however, doesn't mean that they were constantly cheating or that individual players were prevented from winning.

The 'case of Keres' is typically based on rather thin gruel; an episode told by Bronstein, and errors in Keres' games. The problem with the first is that it's uncorroborated. The problem with the second is that Keres committed errors of this type also in other events and under circumstances when we know he was under no outside pressure. Unfortunately there really is no smoking gun to be found (which is not to say that it did not happen, but Bronstein – like Reuben Fine – is notoriously unreliable as a source, and errors under pressure happens to all top class players). In 1948, Botvinnik very clearly was the best player in the world by quite some margin. He won all matches convincingly, including against Keres – who, incidentally had a negative score against Botvinnik going into the tournament (and only a level score after it). Yet, Keres 'the fascist traitor' was allowed to win the 1947 Soviet Championship. A number of the participants even signed a letter of protest against him. Why would they 'allow' such an undesirable person to sweep the field in the workers' paradise? Perhaps because no one put him under pressure to throw games, neither in 1947 nor in 1948. Perhaps Botvinnik won the Hague-Moscow tournament because he simply was the best? (Basically everything points to that.) If Keres was put under pressure to throw games against Botvinnik in '48, how could he be so careless as to win his minimatch against the ethnic Russian Smyslov, hindering him, and lose his minimatch against Reshevsky, helping a capitalist contender, in both cases putting himself in danger for not following orders? Another case put forward is the 1953 Candidates (Bronstein's famous case of Keres v Smyslov in round 24). However, what most people overlook is that the only player of the top contenders (Smyslov, Bronstein, Reshevsky and Keres) to have had his bye at that point was Smyslov (round 23). Even with the standings at the top rounding into home straight as they were with Smyslov and Reshevsky 13½ and Bronstein and Keres 13, Smyslov was firmly in the driving seat. Not only did Reshevsky, Bronstein and Keres have their second bye in the last seven rounds, giving Smyslov a game in hand on all three, they would also all play each other in rounds 24 through to 28. For Smyslov this meant that he was sitting pretty in rounds 24 through to 26 with draw odds against them all (while they needed to beat him to compensate for their future bye), and safe in the knowledge that Reshevsky, Bronstein and Keres would pick points off each other in rounds 26 (Reshevsky–Keres), 27 (Keres–Bronstein), and 28 (Bronstein–Reshevsky). In practice, this amounted to a 2-point advantage over Reshevsky, and a 2½-point advantage over Bronstein and Keres for the run-in.

Well said, @BonTheCat!

Thanks, SmyslovFan!

there will always be people that buys conspiracy theories, so you don't have to waste your time writing a whole essay

PuffyFoot: I know ... just can't help myself!

Bon, I don't think Soviet collaboration and manipulation of results is a "conspiracy theory."  There is far too much first hand testimony to deny Soviet chess shenanigans over decades.

Some of my sources for these blogs include:

The KGB Plays Chess

by GM Boris Gulko, KGB Col. Vladimir Popov, Yuri Felshtindky, GM Victor Korchnoi

Secret Notes

by GM David Bronstein and Sergey Voronkov

Russians versus Fischer

by Dmitry Plisetsky and Sergey Voronkov

Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How a  Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine

by Dave Edmunds and John Eidinow

Insider accounts are worth their weight in gold

”It's probably unfair to say that Euwe's strength dropped more than most”

Maybe, but in that case I wonder who these top players are that belong to the majority that dropped more… Chessmetrics has Euwe as top three in 1947 and then #18 the next year. He never gets close to the top dozen after that, but he is of course in his late 40s. At the same time Najdorf was never Euwe’s level at his peak but reached #12 aged 56, Keres was still top ten at 56, Alekhine died top three aged 54, Capa was top 5 at 50, Smyslov top ten in his 60s.

Going by the Elo list Botvinnik was top 8 on the Elo list in his early 60s, Tal and Spassky top 10 at 50, at a time when it got harder to keep up as an older player than it had been at the time of Steinitz and Lasker.

At least Euwe’s lows were rather extreme compared to the other top players that age at the time, especially with the 13 losses and 6 draws in 20 games in 1948. Euwe was a great and underestimated player, but he didn’t have quite the same longevity in his late 40s as the other World Champions. Maybe he can be said to be in the same group as Flohr, Spassky and Karpov in that respect. Karpov dropped rather quickly from a very high level in his late 40s. But it has become more difficult to participate at elite level in your 50s this century. Kramnik scored bad results just before retiring, Topalov dropped a lot as well, even if Anand still scores good results when he is playing.

The problem for Euwe (and all other western top players) after the war was that suddenly dozens of extremely strong and well supported Soviet players emerged out of nowhere. Spassky, Bronstein, Smyslov, Petrosian, Tal, Korchnoi, Geller etc, combined with maturing players like Botvinnik, and Keres (who rather would not have been a Soviet player but had no choice). Not easy to compete with them for the old school ”amateurs” like Euwe (especially Smyslov was a tough opponent for him, with seven losses in eight games).

#81
Botvinnik, although of Jewish descent, vehemently denied being a Jew.
Stalin worked for and succceeded the Jew Lenin.
Chess was dominated by Jews.
Bronstein was a nephew of Trotzky whose real name was also Bronstein.
Capablanca had complained to Stalin himself that Soviet players were colluding against him.
Bronstein probably was forced to throw game 23 in his match with Botvinnik.
The openings of the games Smyslov-Keres and Bronstein-Keres at Zürich 1953 look suspicious. The Soviet players colluded against Reshevsky.
At Curaçao Soviet players colluded against Fischer. Keres had to lose near the end so as not to win.

I'm not saying it did not happen or could not have happened, but the evidence isn't conclusive. You’re quoting sources which deal with a situation much later, when the threat from Fischer was that much bigger, and after Korchnoi’s defection, after Fischer’s defeat of Spassky. However, then the rules had changed from Candidates tournaments to matches, and obviously a thing we can all be happy happened (not that I think another Candidates Tournament would have stopped Fischer at the time – he was just so much better than everybody else). Furthermore, the Soviets won virtually every single international tournament they participated in until Fischer came on the scene. That tells us a lot of how good they actually were, but it’s not proof of them cheating.

While I consider Jeff Sonas ChessMetrics site a reasonable rough guide to gauging the strength of players, you're making the mistake of confusing quantity with quality. If you look at Najdorf (#2 in the world according to ChessMetrics for three straight years at the end of the 1940s) and Ståhlberg (#3 for the first half of 1948), they went through the South American chess scene like two combine harvesters, but as soon as they faced Soviet opposition, they looked a lot more human. The retired Reuben Fine drew a match with Najdorf around 1950, while Reshevsky resoundingly defeated Najdorf twice in the early 1950s. In the late 1940s, the battle-hardened Ståhlberg drew a match with Gligoric (who was a relative newcomer on the scene). Euwe had a great result in Groningen 1946, but he followed that up with poor performances in South America. As I pointed out already, Euwe's results were much more uneven from his 40s onwards, because he was about a decade past his peak, but that doesn’t mean that his strength tailed off more than most. It just means that the scarcity of games against the Soviets, the Americans and the South Americans showed him off in an artificially good light. His later clashes with them just confirmed this, it was not a result of a rapid decline in playing strength.

The real point is that clearly neither Najdorf, Ståhlberg nor Euwe were #2 or #3 in the world at the time, nor was Alekhine #3 at the time of his death (he'd only been playing in Spain and Portugal for the last couple years of his life). Not only were Reshevsky and Fine stronger than Alekhine, Euwe, Najdorf and Ståhlberg, but obviously also Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres. Other Soviet players, like Lilienthal, Boleslavsky, Bondarevsky and Flohr, were probably not inferior to them. This was already known, because the Soviets had trashed the US, first 15½:4½ in a radio match in 1945, then 12½:7½ in Moscow in 1946 (David Bronstein, the 1948 interzonal winner, played on board 10 in both these matches). Since these groups of players didn’t actually play each regularly until the 1950s, we got these isolated ponds of players (the US, South America, Europe, Soviet Union). As for the rest of you players you mention, they did play a lot against players from all over the world, so those Elo ratings (rather than ChessMetrics ratings – although his data are probably more reliable from 1950s onwards because the isolation is broken – however, Ståhlberg is much higher than expected from the second half of the 1950s; he had some very poor results from about 1956 onwards, when his alcoholism really took hold) are much more reliable and far more correct (Botvinnik was indeed very strong all the way through to his retirement).

Stalin's virulent anti-semitism is on record, and Botvinnik didn't deny he was of Jewish extraction. Quite the contrary, he openly mentioned that his mother’s name was Rabinovich. Stalin wasn't a friend of Lenin (who warned the Communist party not to elect Stalin leader) or Trotsky (who was assassinated in Mexico on Stalin’s orders). Smyslov would have been the obvious candidate, not tainted by ethnicity, nor a traitor, and without a dissident background (by the way, David Bronstein dismissed as an unfounded rumour that he was related to Trotsky, who had only one brother, Alexandr – David’s father’s name was Johonon). He would have been the perfect choice, the perfect Soviet specimen. However, that wasn’t how the Soviet society worked. They all had their backers within the state apparatus, Keres included (the Estonian party bosses, in his case). They were all jostling for position. David Bronstein had his protector in the NKVD (Boris Vainshtain), and there's absolutely no proof he threw the 23rd game, other than David’s own claim. The problem is that Bronstein changed his story about the 1951 match several times, and contradicted himself. For instance, healso claimed that he lost because the girl he was dating at the time wasn’t impressed by the prospect of him becoming World Champion, while on other occasions he played down the importance of chess in his life, despite him having devoted his entire life to it – a rather big case of sour grapes, if you ask me. In fact, throughout his life he seemed obsessed with the fact that he failed to become World Champion. The whole 1951 WC match was characterized by great fighting chess, but also by massive blunders (as has been the case with nearly all World Championship matches). Botvinnik won a whole rook in one game, but failed to convert his material advantage into a win. If they put pressure on Bronstein, that would definitely have been a very suitable moment to resign. Yet he didn't, and managed to salvage the draw.

As for the drawing pact at Curação 1962 Candidates, yes, that seems to have existed between Keres, Geller and Petrosian, but it was not mandated from above, and the question is why they would they exclude Korchnoi and Tal? Especially Korchnoi was going great blazes at the time, finishing second at the 1961 Soviet Championships at Moscow, half a point behind Petrosian, with Geller fourth. Keres (who did not play at Moscow) had actually only finished equal eighth at the Soviet Championships at Baku – were neither Korchnoi, Petrosian nor Geller participated – also in 1961. Such a drawing pact makes you wonder why they would hobble themselves in that way against Fischer, who had clobbered the field at the Stockholm Interzonal earlier in the year? The drawing pact only meant that they risked dropping crucial half points while the young American ran away with the tournament. However, Fischer was still an immature player at the time, and failed to husband his strength in the very evenly matched contest. He overpressed in several games and was virtually out of contention as early as after the first cycle. If you scrutinize the two games put forward by Fischer as proof of the drawing pact, they took place long after Fischer was out of it, and if anyone it was Geller who should feel hard done by (because Geller agreed a draw against Petrosian in a better position, while Petrosian agreed a draw against Keres in a similar situation). In any event, Keres being forced to lose against Benko is just a figment of someone’s febrile imagination; Geller and Petrosian offered to help Benko analyse the adjournment (but Benko was a fine endgame player in his own right, and had a won game). Why on earth would they draw attention to themselves by such a fantastic breach of sporting etiquette if Keres had been pressed into throwing the game anyway? You can be 100 per cent certain that he lost that game due to tiredness and nerves.

In 1953, the Soviets colluded against Reshevsky? First of all, we only have Bronstein's word for it (and we know that he's not very reliable as a source), but much more importantly: a) Reshevsky was known for offering or agreing draws when he was actually losing the game or doing really badly – round 3 against Averbach, round 7 against Boleslavsky, round 17 against Petrosian, round 19 (when Szabo overlooked a mate in two) are such examples. However, in this tournament there are also several examples of Sammy (mostly) offering or agreeing draws very early, such as on move 21 in round 9 against Geller (who was a pawn down with no compensation), at move 19 in round 10 as white against Smyslov, 14 moves against Najdorf as white in round 16, after 12 moves in round 26 against Keres, and 20 moves against Taimanov in the last round. Put it this way, Reshevsky did himself no favours by agreeing several early draws, often in very promising positions or still rich in possibilities. His chronic time-trouble meant that he also rode his luck to a great extent. Did the Soviets give him a hard time, trying to tire him out in long games? Not really – only four of his games were adjourned for a second time (in which he scored a measly ½/4 …). b) Look at Reshevsky's score against the others in the top half of the tournament table. They all outscore him. Reshevsky only managed to win one(!) game against the top nine, and it wasn't for lack of chances (the favourable game against Geller in round 9 has already been mentioned, but he also threw away an easily won game against Petrosian in his customary mad time-scramble, and dropped a draw in a won adjournment against Geller two pawns to the good). c) If we tot up the respective scores of the top four against the Soviet competitors, the difference isn’t exactly earth shattering: Smyslov 9½/16, Bronstein 8½/16, Keres 8/16, Reshevsky 8½/18. d) Reshevsky's score against Smyslov and Bronstein was the same as that of Keres – ½/4 – why would that be suspicious only in the case of Keres?

Arguably, both Reshevsky and Keres lost out on first place specifically by their poor showing against Smyslov and Bronstein, whereas Bronstein threw away his chances by his terrible score against the bottom markers Averbach, Taimanov (what the blazes were those two doing nicking draws off Bronstein when he was neck and neck with Reshevsky, if they had team orders to stop the American?), Szabo, Gligoric, Euwe and Ståhlberg, scoring only 6½/12, whereas Smyslov scored 8/12, Keres 8½/12, and Reshevsky a whopping 9½/12. If you really think something is suspicious, why not point to Bronstein's results against the bottom half? It's very funny how Bronstein does not mention that debacle of his at all when he tries to explain how Smyslov won the tournament.

Let’s turn to the suspicious opening of Smyslov–Keres and Bronstein–Keres. In round 9, Smyslov and Keres repeat the opening from their game of the Budapest Candidates 1950, a well-known theoretical line at the time. Smyslov introduces a novelty and wins. As likely as not Keres had something prepared further down the line (he often introduced novelties to great effect, not seldom overturning established wisdom in the process), but Smyslov got his novelty in first. At the time, they were both on 5 points, Reshevsky on 6. Why specifically should Keres be singled out? It would be madness not to hedge their bets that early in the tournament if they really were colluding, and it would make much more sense to ask others with much worse chances. In round 12, with Bronstein and Keres tied on 5½ points (Reshevsky 7½ and Smyslov 7), Keres makes a slight inaccuracy on the 5th move in a closed Sicilian, and loses – why Keres and not Bronstein? Then Kotov defeats Smyslov in round 21 ... By the time we reach round 24 Keres, as I already pointed out, had no option but to play for a win against Smyslov (a draw would be as good as a loss with Smyslov having a game in hand on all his rivals), and in round 27, Keres and Bronstein drew at a point when they were practically without any chance of catching up with Smyslov anyway (trailing him by 2½ and 2 points, respectively). Nothing particularly suspicious in that.

Now, go back and look at the game from round 2, Keres–Averbakh, and explain to me why such tiny opening slips as the one’s committed against Smyslov and Bronstein would be suspicious, when Keres' 21.Rf4 drops a whole pawn against one of the lesser lights of the Soviet contingent. Simply put, all players make mistakes throughout a long tournament, sometimes they're punished, and sometimes they're not (as we've seen with Reshevsky). This point has been made players far stronger than I (GM John Nunn being a particular high-profile case). Furthermore, Keres himself was the first to admit that throughout his career he sometimes struggled with nerves when a lot was at stake. Simply put, and as I pointed out in my previous post, whatever happened there on the shore of the lake, Smyslov went into that home straight with a lot of 'cash in hand' compared to Bronstein, Keres and Reshevsky (I’m most certainly not the only one to make this obvious point either – Najdorf was probably the first to point it out in his book of the tournament). They had no option but to push hard for a win. Smyslov defeated first Keres and then Reshevsky, and it was all over. Bronstein in the next round offered a draw after 21 moves.

#92
Excellent posts. A few comments.
Yes, Stalin wanted to deport Jews to Siberia, as for example told in the musical 'The Fiddler on the Roof". However, all top players Botvinnik, Bronstein, Tal, Boleslavsky, Korchnoi etc. were of Jewish Descent. Chess was popular in the Soviet Union. Chess was important for national prestige. Chess supremacy kind of showcased the superiority of the Soviet system. It would have been contraproductive for Stalin to purge his Jewish chess players.

Botvinnik said: A Jew by blood, Russian by culture, Soviet by upbringing. Botvinnik was atheist. Botvinnik's father prohibited to speak Jiddish. Somewhere else I read Botvinnik denied being a Jew. Somewhere else I read he considered himself a Christian.

Zürich 1953: Bronstein - Keres: the pendulum rook 5...Rb8, 12...Ra8, 16...Rb8 seems suspicious, Bronstein then recommends 18...Ra8...

Smyslov - Keres: 10...Be7 is a poor choice, maybe on purpose to lose.
Keres - Smyslov is like suicide chess, very suspicious.
Bear in mind that Smyslov won the tournament largely because he beat Keres twice.

The other losses by Keres might be team orders: "Hey fascist traitor, you get too far and you might surpass our Smyslov, hit the break and lose a game..." or "You can play and take points from the non Soviet contenders, but do not dare to win." At the beginning of the tournament the team orders might have been to bet on 2 horses and advance Smyslov as well as Bronstein just in case.

Bronstein also mentions Keres was asked why he never got a shot at the World Championship and Keres did not reply but just smiled.
Bronstein also mentions somebody complained he had to throw a game. Bronstein replied: they made me lose a whole match. The different accounts by Bronstein may be caused by some admonishment not to speak out about it.

”Euwe's results were much more uneven from his 40s onwards, because he was about a decade past his peak, but that doesn’t mean that his strength tailed off more than most”

I think they did tail off more than those of the other World Champions, at least his lows were not comparable to those of other top players in their late 40s. A result like 13 losses and 6 draws in 20 games in 1948 is rather extreme for a player that recently was a credible World Champion candidate.

Euwe had been quite consistent before the war. He played many strong tournaments in the 1930s and always finished with a plus score, with one exception, AVRO 1938 where he finished with an even score, equal with Alekhine and 0.5 behind Botvinnik. In 1939 Euwe lost 6.5-7.5 in a match against Keres, who maybe was the best player in the world at the time. In Groningen 1946 Botvinnik scored +10, Euwe +9, Smyslov +6. The best performance in Smyslov’s career that far, and he still finished 1.5 point behind Euwe.

Then in 1947 Euwe scored -1 in a tournament Ståhlberg won with +6, scored +4 in another Ståhlberg won with +10 (Euwe was one point behind Pilnik and even with Bolbochan). In New York 1948 he was equal with Pilnik at +1 but Fine scored +7. In Venice Euwe scored +3 (Barcza and Canal scored +6, Najdorf +10).

At least result wise something happened after Groningen 1946 but maybe not too surprising.

Whether I agree with some of the views expressed here, or not, I appreciate the tone and tenor of the discussion.  It has been a good debate.

Much better than the garbage heap that composes the contents of most chess.com forums in which a "debate" consisting almost entirely of ad hominems and irrelevancies is conducted.

The more one looks at it, the more insane is Euwe's performance in Groningen 1946. It was quite a strong tournament, the strongest of the whole 1940s according to Chessmetrics (and even if they are wrong there from any logical point of view, it at least can't be denied that it was very strong).

Euwe lost to Smyslov as usual, but apart from that game he had 11 wins and 3 draws after 15 rounds. He had won with black against top players like Boleslavsky and Szabo, and came an inch from beating also Botvinnik with black, and was leading with a full point.

Botvinnik meant that Euwe probably would be declared World Champion if he won the event (Alekhine had died a few months earlier), and very much doubted he could hold the draw in the endgame against Euwe. Eventually Botvinnik found the drawing resource in that game and was still in contention with a few rounds left, but even after he had finished his last round game, he was worried that Euwe would be sole winner of the tournament.

Botvinnik feared that Kotov would go wrong in the final ongoing game against Euwe, where the position was quite drawish. Najdorf consoled him, noticing that Euwe just had hung a piece, and eventually Botvinnik won with the smallest possible margin. But quite an achievement by Euwe to play like that at 45.

Back to Zürich: when of 15 participants 9 are from one country  something is fundamentally flawed. That is also what Fischer pointed out after Curaçao. FIDE then changed to Candidates' Matches, but more recently returned to a Candidates' Tournament for financial reasons. Even in the last Yekaterinburg Candidates the 3 Russians and 2 Chinese among 8 participlants gave rise to criticism.
By the way of these 9 Soviet players 5 were Jewish.
Of the 15 participants 8 were Jewish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_chess_players 

The old saying is, "The deck was stacked."

I'm getting Zurich 1953 next week. I've heard nothing but good reviews and my middle game planning definitely needs work 🤔