01 September 2008

Soviet Era Photos III

The last month has been a real bonanza for collectors of Soviet era photos. The latest batch is being offered by the same seller that I mentioned in Soviet Era Photos, i.e. Show only: Items from seller bulkcover.


The description said, 'Press photo by M.P***** (cannot read). Dated 1970. At the game GM L.Lindjel (??) and GM M.Botvinnik (USSR). Sized about 14.2 x 11 cm. Retouched for the press publishing. In fine condition.'

I chose the photo because of the unusual spelling 'Lendjel', which is probably GM Levente Lengyel. Chessgames.com has the game twice, once with 'Laszlo Lengyel' playing White...

Laszlo Lengyel vs Mikhail Botvinnik, Yugoslavia 1969
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1032810

...and once with 'Levente Lengyel' as White (follow the link in the first comment). The Chessgames.com player pages for the two Lengyels are also a mess. The opening is classified as 'Modern Defense: Queen Pawn Fianchetto (A40)', but it looks like a King's Indian, or maybe a Benoni, to me. That's an unusual number of errors for Chessgames.com, which is usually reliable.

Lengyel won the game. I couldn't find a crosstable for the event, but Glenn Giffen's page on Mikhail Botvinnik says that the ex-World Champion finished '7th +5=7-3 after Polugaevsky, Matulovic, Gligoric, Ivkov & Lengyel'. That might be Polugaevsky sitting behind Botvinnik in the photo, but I don't recognize his opponent.

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