The Gijón Tournament

By Bent Larsen

The tournament was played from 23 to 31 July and was the 11th international tournament in Gijón, situated on Spain’s north coast and blessed with an excellent chess climate. Cool winds come in from the Bay of Biscay and prevent the temperature from becoming too high for abstract thought. And if one is fortunate enough to avoid adjourned games — and I was — one can spend a great deal of time on the splendid bathing beach.

Naturally, I can only be satisfied with the result of the tournament. I was never in danger of losing a single game and defeated all the weaker participants, which meant that I could be content with draws against the three most dangerous rivals.

In that connection I cannot resist giving my game against Darga, which was played in the final round. A win would give Darga first place, and even if he lost, second place was secure enough. This is what happened; I had White:

Bent Larsen – Klaus Darga
1. Sf3 Sf6 2. g3 g6 3. Lg2 Lg7 4. c4 0-0 5. d4 c5 6. 0-0 Sc6 7. Sc3 d6 8. dxc5 dxc5 9. Lf4 Sd7 10. Dc1 Sd4 11. Td1 Da5 12. Sxd4 cxd4 13. Sd5 e5, and Darga offered a draw.

Naturally I accepted, although my position was so superior that I felt almost certain I would have won with continued play.

Darga otherwise played excellently. His only obvious weakness is that he plays very uncertainly in time trouble. This undoubtedly cost him the win against both Torán and Corral, and the same nearly happened in the game against O’Kelly, where, after having outplayed his strong opponent in dazzling style, he suddenly played far too cautiously because the position was too complicated to permit abstract thought.

O’Kelly, however, then did something that he ought to have been too experienced to do: he allowed himself to be carried away by the tempo and suddenly blundered a piece. On the whole, O’Kelly was not in his best form, even though he had won the previous five tournaments in which he had played. Or perhaps precisely for that reason. Too many easy victories over weaker opponents can dull a master’s eye for fine nuances.

Donner played solidly without making a particularly strong impression. Díez del Corral showed great talent; he is an excellent tactician, and had he not thrown away a clearly winning position against Perez in the penultimate round, he would have joined the leaders. Perez is an extremely dangerous attacking player, whereas his positional play is rather uneven. Torán ought normally to have done better in this company, but he was handicapped by having to attend to his work during the tournament. Lladó woke up after a dreadful start, half a point from five games, and had both Donner and O’Kelly in winning positions. Rico, on the other hand, was completely harmless, despite having once cheated Alekhine out of first place in a couple of tournaments. And Deyck was not as dangerous as I had feared when I heard that his cradle had stood in Russia.