A friend at our club found this pairing sheet from an old tournament among his papers, and he is seeking help identifying what tournament it could have been from.
No one at the club, including veteran players, could say for sure what event this might have been. All we are sure of is that it was a large tournament and that it took place decades ago, possibly in the 1980s. Evidently it was in the days before computerized pairing systems. The sheet is autographed by GM Florin Gheorghiu.
We’re hoping that the players and match-ups listed will help someone here to determine what tournament this was, and when.
No idea what event this was from. Probably from before 1980 as it lists Redman as well as Dlugy. Note that the players numbers are on the pairing sheet, with Gheorghui (player 1) and Dlugy (player 88). Also, I don’t know the last time Tim Redman played a rated game.
Yeah, sadly the USCF player tournament histories go back only to the early '90s.
Maybe there’ll be someone who played in or organized tournaments where these kinds of pairing sheets were used. Or who might even recognize the handwriting on it!
It was a Continental Chess Association (CCA) pairing sheet. It might have been from the World Open, although even then, the CCA organized many other tournaments. Nowadays CCA is putting its crosstables online, but of course this was too long ago for that. You might write to Mr. Goichberg (or send him a PM – his name on these forums is chessoffice); he might be able to dig up an old cross table or perhaps recognize this one. I am pretty sure you can narrow down the year to 1979-82, and that might help in searching for crosstables. Good luck!
Gheorghiu played in the 1979 US Open (he kibitzed the ending of my game against Biyiasis). So 1979 World Open is a good guess. Looks like a Philadelphia event (Dehmelt, Tom Costigan).
Thanks very much, that looks like an excellent theory. Bob (my friend who played in that tournament) is from the Philadelphia area, so it makes sense.
Great idea to consult the CCA website. Going through the results from neighboring years, I see that Gheorghiu also played in the 1978 and 1980 World Opens. So, at worst, we’ve narrowed it down to a three-year window.
thinking it’s from a midwest tournament. recognise some “ohio” names in there. Glueck, Wygle, Harkins… probably more if i look. east coast would make sense too.
I got out my old issues of Chess Life with the intention of looking up some players whose positions in the crosstable were very close: Dehmelt (80), Sulman (81), Kitces (86), DeJong (87), Dlugy (88), and Shapiro (89).
In the January 1981 list, their ratings are: Dehmelt 2303, Sulman 2393, Kitces 2287, DeJong not present, Dlugy 2209, Shapiro 2319. This is pretty promising because Dlugy was rapidly improving – on the January 1980 list he had been 1989. So 1981 is a candidate year for this event, but I wouldn’t go any earlier – my earlier suggestion of 1979 was way too soon for Dlugy.
In the 1981 World Open web page, Gheorghiu isn’t even listed among the winners. Among the winners, I see Rohde and Valvo on the pairing sheet, and also Meyer, but it might be the wrong Meyer, since there were two masters, John and Eugene, who were brothers.
The other events on the 1981 CCA web page are two “international swisses”. Neither of them was nearly large enough to be the source of this pairing sheet.
I myself played in the 1981 event. It was in a beautiful spot near Poughkeepsie, about 80 miles north of New York City by car. Beautiful but, I’m afraid, kind of out of the way. I didn’t appear in this pairing sheet, having already lost a game to a lower rated player.
Based on your reporting, I’m leaning toward 1980 being the year for this sheet, because Gheorghiu isn’t listed among the winners in 1981 but is listed among the winners in 1980. But this is only a “lean,” as it’s conceivable Gheorghiu did play in '81 and simply had a bad tournament.
I’m not sure that my Chess Life collection includes the late '70s/early '80s as I was away from chess during that time, but I’ll see if I can find rating lists in my archives for 1980. Were the rating lists published in Chess Life just once a year back then? If more often, then hopefully one could find a rating list closer to World Open time in late June.
Ratings were only published once a year, in December or January. By then, the USCF was publishing “rating supplements”, which were mailed out separately several times a year to affiliates.
My own best guess is 1981. But for that to be the year, Gheorghiu would have to have finished out of the money. I’ll look for the tournament report in some later issue of Chess Life – who knows what clues it might offer.
I found the article about the 1981 World Open in the November 1981 issue of Chess Life, but it doesn’t mention Gheorghiu. It does mention that there were 5 GM’s in the tournament and that none of them finished in the tie for 1st. (Three of them were in the tie for 5th, so two of them must have finished out of the money.)
Did the Pennswoodpusher publish World Open crosstables? Probably not, but worth a look. (Pre-MSA, state publications often published full crosstables of major events.)
Doesn’t look like they published CCA events. There were lots of crosstables, but no World Opens. Also in 1981 it was played at State University of New York, New Paltz, NY. So maybe the NY state magazine?
