Eksjö 1975

The third international Eksjö tournament also fulfilled its purpose — to secure Swedish IM norms. This time it was the youngsters Axel Ornstein and Lars-Åke Schneider who achieved the required score. Ornstein already had two IM norms, and he is now the third Swede with a valid IM title. For Lars-Åke Schneider this was his first norm. Sweden thus has five players with partial results toward the IM title, namely Hans Ek, Jaan Eslon, Ove Kinnmark, Håkan Åkvist and now Schneider.

Schneider will probably manage the remaining norms within the next three-year period, provided that he is given opportunities to play. His play impressed except on two occasions. It was in the opening stage of the tournament that he chose the wrong plan against IM Enrico Paoli and ended up in a lost endgame, and in the round after that he forgot something as elementary as cutting off Ornstein's king in the endgame. Ornstein was given a free draw.

Ornstein is naturally a good chess player. He can go far. But in the Eksjö tournament he did not impress despite becoming the best of the Swedish players. Against Schneider and Kinnmark he should have lost, considering the positions that arose, and against the tournament's only grandmaster he was completely outplayed despite having memorized the variation beforehand. But that is also the strength of a good player: being able to disentangle difficult situations and turn games around. That kind of fighting spirit is often displayed by Swedish chess players at home. Unfortunately it only appears in isolated cases abroad. Ornstein, however, also showed that he is fully capable of exploiting his opponents' weak squares.

The eventual tournament winner, Bert Enklaar, showed how international experience, avoidance of time trouble and stubborn striving can win games. Against Paoli, Åkvist and Ek he stood clearly worse, but the Småland players ran into time trouble and threw away the points. Against Paoli he even scored a zero.

Had Kinnmark won the game in the fourth round, he too would have achieved the 5½ points required for an IM norm. Now he resigned something and let several half-points slip away against the other Swedish players rather carelessly. Against both Ek and Ornstein he had a clearly superior position, but Schneider could probably have slipped considerably more in the endgame. Against Hecht in the final round Kinnmark had material to spare. But a draw in a queen ending was sufficient to secure fifth place.

Now a year has passed since Kinnmark took his first IM norm. He has two years in which to collect the remaining two. The question is whether he will now have to rely on Eksjö Chess Club to be able to arrange opportunities for Swedish norm-seekers to play for their title.

Åkvist did not quite keep pace as organizer. Despite that he managed to scrape together 3½ points. It could easily have been fewer. The endgame against Gulbrandsen was won, but became a draw. Against Enklaar he had the advantage but lost, and against Hecht he was simply a half-point worse.

Hans-Joachim Hecht played better in this tournament than in 1973. Admittedly he has since become a grandmaster, but on the other hand he was then a professional and is now an amateur. Hecht goes backwards. When he became a grandmaster he abandoned chess as a profession and became a programmer instead. His play showed security. He also played with margins, even if he sacrificed and stood badly at times.

Jan Berglund