Not According to Expectations

It is difficult to write about a tournament in which the names of the Bulgarian participants occupy the lower half of the table. The bitterness caused by numerous missed chances and time-trouble disasters lingered not only among the players but also among the public, which filled the hall of the Youth House in Varna round after round.

Looking back through the games, one searches for the reasons behind this almost collective shock, which affected not only the young players Inkiov, Grigorov and Prodanov but also experienced fighters such as national champion Evgeni Ermenkov and Nikola Spiridonov.

The reasons should not be sought in the fact that the tournament failed to obtain the expected grandmaster qualification status; that applied equally to the foreign players. Nor can the larger number of young and inexperienced participants be blamed, because Shuba and Tompa were young as well.

What was chiefly missing was sporting and creative ambition, self-confidence and the desire to justify the expectations of the Bulgarian chess public, which naturally hoped to see a compatriot on the winners' podium. It was also unfortunate that, although Bulgaria already had five grandmasters, not one took part, leaving the tournament below grandmaster category.

The tone was therefore set by the visitors. Winner Lutz Espig owed his success above all to an exceptional sense of responsibility, a well-developed opening repertoire, methodical handling of the resulting positions and confident conversion of advantages. His concentration throughout every game could serve as an example, especially to younger players.

Much the same could be said of runner-up Mihai Suba, the talented young Romanian, who showed much more mature play than the year before. Soviet grandmaster Gennadi Kuzmin, still relatively unfamiliar to Bulgarian spectators, produced imaginative chess full of bold decisions and tactical effects and attracted particular public interest.

Pribyl and Knezevic showed a mature masterly style and deserved their places among the leaders. Cuban Fernandez also demonstrated clear progress, creating many tactical problems for the Bulgarian players.

Among the home contingent Ventsislav Inkiov performed best and still had chances for an international-master norm until the final rounds, when nervous tension proved too much. The remaining Bulgarian players performed below their normal strength.

Georgi Daskalov