Zonal 11 is one of the first links in the long chain of high-level chess competitions that eventually leads to the contest for the world championship title, presently held by Karpov. From the eleven zonal tournaments, players qualify for the two interzonal tournaments. From the interzonals, players qualify for the Candidates Tournament. From there comes the challenger to the champion.

Lisbon Airport, 14 November 1978. From Nigeria arrived Omuku, who introduced himself in surprisingly fluent English: “I’m Emmanuel Omuku, from Nigeria, pleased to meet you.” That trivial little event marked the beginning of the final phase of “Operation Zonal 11.”

This zonal tournament, corresponding to the Afro-Mediterranean zone, had taken place the previous year in the Algarve, as had already happened about a decade earlier. It ran from 22 November to 17 December. Like an iceberg, of which only a small part is visible above the water, the tournament itself was only a part of a much larger mass of decisions, meetings, conferences, and many hours of work — at least in the opinion of the team writing this article.

The first phase was played at the Hotel Júpiter in Praia da Rocha, and the later phase at the Hotel Montechoro in Albufeira, which, it should be said, offered excellent conditions for the proper conduct of the event.

Omuku was therefore the first arrival. He had left home after giving instructions for regular correspondence, indicating only this address: “Zonal 11 — Portugal.”

In the middle of the afternoon on the 22nd, with the second batch of players, one could hear timid exchanges of international impressions in the hotel lobby. The organizers welcomed this with pleasure, although everyone looked somewhat distant and flustered — and not because they were being critically listened to. The light soon began to fade. The playing hall was nothing other than the hotel reception area itself, which would simultaneously serve as the competition hall, a meeting place for hotel guests, a children’s play area with toys and a tartan track for the children of those same guests, not to mention the shrill sound of the coffee machine, which immediately echoed through the room.

Even so, hope — naive hope — and enthusiasm were not lacking. We based them firmly, we thought, on the fact that, as it was low season, the hotel was “supposed” to be half-empty. We therefore dealt with the problem of lighting under the questioning and easily accusatory gaze of the players present. We took our revenge with fleeting, perhaps hasty, caricatural comments about them and their appearance — imagine our embarrassment when we later discovered that Ljubojević understood and spoke Portuguese.

Then came the introductory meeting. On one point, the players raised no problem concerning the members of the organization. But when they were shown the available playing material, matters were very different. There was only one type of board and two sets of pieces: the familiar plastic pieces, and another set of good size, but… The first were considered too small and too shiny; the second were the right size for tournaments, championships and matches, but not for those boards.

Toth summed up the matter with a simple, contemptuous gesture, pretending to take off a yellowish piece. When the Portuguese delegation — late, as usual — arrived at the venue, excited comments in English, with Arab, Italian and Serbo-Croat accents, crossed with others in French, also with exotic dissonances. Here and there, in small local “microclimates,” one could hear Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Turkish, and so on.

If choosing the pieces was difficult, what can be said about the drawing of lots for the players in the four planned groups? This is a traditionally disputed point, and our method was to put slips of paper into a closed container, from which they were drawn by the person who at that moment understood the least about chess. That was when Ivkov vetoed it. He wanted to draw his own lot himself, and then confusion broke out. Some spoke in English, others in French, asking what was going on. Grandmaster Ljubojević spoke at full volume in the many languages he knows; Grandmaster Mariotti made his booming voice heard; Omuku stressed the hopes that his country, and all of Africa, had placed in him — and in the other Africans.

The first session passed without incident. The same cannot be said of the second. The destabilizing element was the Tunisian Bouaziz, who gave voice to the weaker players — the African non-grandmasters — who argued that, under the planned system, they would have to fight for 50% in order to qualify for the Interzonal, but that the system of preliminary series made this much harder than a single “pool” system would have done. In their view, a pool system would have been fairer.

The protest gained support and, in an almost unprecedented development, there was something close to a total strike. Only Stefano Tatai made the first move.

The organization’s argument was this: the players had arrived already knowing the system, and if they were present, it meant that they had accepted it. A single pool system was possible only with fewer than twenty players, because of time limitations and other constraints. At that point, 23 of the 24 registered players were present, and it was still not known whether the Libyan Debreka would arrive after missing the first session.

The opposition’s argument was that the weaker players would be eliminated from real contention after three or four games, whereas the pool system would be fairer. The Africans argued that, under the proposed system, they would not be able to reach 50%, even if they had the playing strength to do so. They also stated — and this was a strong argument — that they would not play under any other system. FIDE was telephoned, and it proved impossible to undertake the marathon that a full pool would have required: 23 games in 24 days, practically without rest.

As the days went by, we began to notice each player’s peculiar traits. Grandmaster Velimirovic, for example, while playing, would raise his right eyebrow, then lower it while the left one rose; then both eyebrows would quickly descend as the center of his forehead rose; shortly afterwards would come short, rapid sideways shakes of the head.

As for Grandmaster Matulovic, in a month of daily contact we cannot remember a single occasion on which he addressed a word to us or returned a greeting. We believe he enjoyed general antipathy. He was always seen wearing a jacket or blouson and slippers.

Characteristic was his attitude in the game against Makropoulos, in which, quite unnecessarily — to the delight of the assembled masters, including his opponents — he prolonged a completely lost game. The adjournment was reached the position where he was a Rook down.

This was the only game of the session still unfinished, and the arbiters already believed they had earned a free day after the resumption. But Matulovic decided to adjourn, sealing his move. Later, when the arbiter, after a hurried dinner, opened the envelope, he found only the signed scoresheet: “1–0.”

In an informal inquiry, it was concluded that the scene had been intended to keep the information from reaching the press. Until that moment, Matulovic had had no defeats. The next day, the press could report that he had adjourned the game, but not that he had lost it. Since everyone was playing every day, the result would immediately lose its topicality.

Everyone had something distinctive. An employee of the Hotel Montechoro, right after the first session following the move to that hotel, turned to us with a perplexed look and said: “They all look rather scruffy, don’t they? Except for that young fellow who looks normal.” He pronounced this badly; the “normal young fellow” — Ljubojević — then performed one of his characteristic manoeuvres: he sprang up explosively, took a few very quick steps between the tables, hands behind his back, and stopped theatrically beside a pawn, watching Velimirovic’s game, only to set off again at once. The employee gave up and withdrew thoughtfully.

The first phase took place in relatively good harmony. The Yugoslavs gave “lessons” and suffered general dislike in the presence of the Greek Makropoulos. Even after being warned, Ljubojević, the highest-rated player present, could not avoid the great effort of having to make a draw. We would add that, without a certain degree of cooperation from the Greek, the Yugoslav would by then have had to regret not only the loss of first place and 30 contos, but also second place.

Tatai was at the center of the problems from the very beginning. After his decision during the strike — when he alone began play — many wanted the settling of accounts to take place over the board. Indeed, that desire did not disappear. Tatai, however, proved equal to the situation and began the tournament in extraordinary form. More than once people began to consider, and even say aloud, that one of the top three places might not go to the Yugoslavs — something that, at the start of the championship, had seemed implausible.

Ivkov, the veteran, was given the task of calming the stormy grandmasters from the East. It was not a light or merely ceremonial task; during play, he rarely had the luxury of treating it lightly.

Nor did everything end there for Tatai. In the 10th session another quarrel broke out. It happened in the game Ljubojević — Tatai. More than because of what actually took place, we suppose that a large part of the responsibility lay in Tatai’s position and role in the tournament. The Yugoslav was expected to avenge and fight, not merely as an individual, but on behalf of the whole team.

Tatai was a pawn down and had a fairly bad position, but he was not without chances. His only hope lay in the enormous time trouble of his opponent, who had only one minute for about ten moves — Tatai had more than an hour. Ljubojević, under great nervous tension, desperately needed Tatai’s time in order to think. Since a player who is not in time trouble is obliged to keep score, he could study the position while Tatai was writing down the moves.

But Tatai did not proceed as he should have. He made a series of two very quick moves, then stopped to write them down. There were two arbiters present at the time, and either of them should have warned the offender. But a hesitation of a few seconds intervened — the kind that happens when two players both go for the ball and neither ends up touching it — and the opportunity passed. Tatai made his last four moves at lightning speed, and Ljubojević, with less than fifteen seconds on his clock, put a piece down.