Swedish Double Victory in the Eksjö Tournament

Eksjö Chess Club made an excellent investment when it chose to celebrate its 60th anniversary with an international tournament. It also became a great success, both organizationally and in terms of results. The local player Håkan Åkvist and Hans Ek of Jönköping managed the feat of not only sharing victory in the tournament but also scoring the 6 points required for an IM norm, something that is by no means commonplace for Swedish players. In addition to those already mentioned, the tournament included the four international masters Hans-Joachim Hecht and Bela Soos, West Germany, Moshe Czerniak, Israel, and Wlodzimierz Schmidt, Poland. The Swedish players Lennart Ljungquist, Johnny Ivarsson and Lennart Liljedahl, together with Robert Bellin of England, completed the field.

Åkvist began with a zero against Soos, but got his revenge in the second round by defeating Ljungquist. This was evidently the injection he needed; in the continuation he played solidly and sharply, which was exactly what was required to hold his own in the evenly matched tournament. A win over Czerniak, a long drawn game against Bellin, and then it was time to bring down the pre-tournament favourite Hecht. The game was not well played but very exciting, and ultimately Åkvist managed to draw the longest straw. After a winning game against Ivarsson came a calm and quick draw with the solid Pole Schmidt. Now the situation was that Åkvist needed 1 point from the two remaining rounds for an IM norm, though he still had Ek left in the final round. Ek, for his part, needed 2½ points from these rounds plus his adjourned game against Czerniak. Åkvist declined two draw offers from Liljedahl in the penultimate round, after a hard fight it became clear that Åkvist could not win, but there was still ½ point missing from the coveted 6.

Ek had started with draws against Bellin and Hecht and took his first victory against Ivarsson in the third round. Thereafter followed nothing but draws until the penultimate round, when he won again, this time against Ljungquist. Ek quickly won a pawn and toward the end of the game further pawns fell. The adjourned game against Czerniak was then managed by Ek with the utmost “utilitarian tactics” to victory after 92 moves, a tournament record.

Thus the tournament was in reality decided for the two Småland players. Their mutual meeting in the final round did not last long; the point was shared and the tournament victory shared as well, and Schmidt succeeded in ending the tournament as he had begun it, namely with a win, this time against Hecht. His victory in the first round had come against Ivarsson.

Hecht Uncertain

With his two grandmaster norms, Hecht was the clear favourite beforehand. Admittedly, he was not in the best psychological balance for personal reasons, but with his routine after 3½ years as a professional chess player he had most people’s backing. Schmidt too belonged among the favourites. Last year he lost only one game in the Polish Championship and had four wins and eleven draws; especially against the tournament’s Börje Jansson he won two games and drew two. Despite a quick victory over Hecht in the final round, however, there “only” remained three points of the better Sonneborn-Berger score than the former grandmaster Soos and Hecht. He nevertheless managed to maintain his reputation by completing the tournament without a loss, which Bellin, among others, also did.

An Even and Hard-Fought Tournament

As the tournament developed, no player was beaten in advance in any game, which was evident, among other things, from the fact that every participant except Bellin scored at least one win. The 21-year-old Englishman is otherwise one of the many who began chasing a grandmaster title after the financier Jim Slater’s offer in connection with the latest Hastings tournament. Bellin played cautiously and correctly, but avoided all complications and chances in this tournament, and the result followed accordingly.

Otherwise

Of the Swedish players, Lennart Liljedahl was considered from the start to have the best possibilities; by his own account he had not, however, been in form and had trained too little. His fighting qualities usually guarantee him a few points, and now he began badly but finished strongly with 2½ points from the last three rounds. The final spurt might have been even better if in the round before the penultimate one he had not sat on an embarrassing mate against Soos. Jonny Ivarsson and Lennart Ljungquist did well in the middlegame but dropped unnecessary points just before the time controls; this happened to both of them in their final games against Hecht.

Both Ivarsson and Ljungquist lacked some of the international tournament routine; the former often ran into time trouble because of insufficient knowledge of openings, and in particular he consumed far too much time at the beginning of the games. The fitness of both also seemed to run out toward the end of the five-hour sessions.

The oldest participant in the tournament, 63-year-old Moshe Czerniak, had some difficulties with his physical condition. The longer the games became, the harder it was for him to find the best moves. He therefore tried from the beginning to complicate play with tricky openings, in which he had a smooth positional style. It was noteworthy that in only one of the nine games did he castle to the same side as his opponent.

General

The Eksjö tournament was the first qualifying international tournament in Sweden for almost two and a half years. Since an IM norm is valid for only three years, there is clearly an opportunity for Swedish players to qualify for an IM title before it is even possible to speak of a GM title. The problem, however, is that as long as there are so few qualifying Swedish tournaments, the same invited foreign players are often used. The problem is not impossible to solve, however, and Eksjö Chess Club has in some respects shown the way by demonstrating how a club of about 40 members can organize an international tournament in a town of about 10,000 inhabitants and perhaps still come out ahead.

Now is actually the right time to begin. It turned out, if anything, at the latest Olympiad that there are Swedish players who can hold their own in international competition. Can the Eksjö tournament function as a stimulus not only for the Swedish Chess Federation but also for the chess clubs throughout the country, it has probably served a purpose that is even more important than the tournament itself.