Candidates chess: A champ's death, Cold War drama and roulette rising

We take a peek into the tournament's history -- origin, drama and wacky instances.

The Candidates tournament that will take place in Toronto from April 3-22 and feature five Indian players has a storied past. We take a peek into the tournament's history -- origin, drama and wacky instances.

Representative image (AP)

How a world champion's death led to the birth of Candidates

On the morning of March 24, 1946, Alexander Alekhine was found slumped lifeless in a chair in his hotel room in Estoril, Portugal, with a peg-in travelling chess set lying open beside him. At 53, he was the reigning world champion; the only world chess champion to die with the crown. This unprecedented situation threw the chess world into a tizzy.

Until Alekhine’s death, world champions got to pick who they’d face in their title defence. Top players were required to negotiate with reigning champions and secure funds to arrange for a match. Just before he died, Alekhine is understood to have agreed to play Mikhail Botvinnik in the next World Championship match with the Moscow Chess Club promising $10,000 to organise it.

However, with the world title falling vacant, the need for a fresh tournament arose.

After Alekhine’s death, governing body Fide organised a World Championship match in The Hague to determine a new world champion. The players were drawn from the 1938 AVRO tournament, those who were still among the strongest players. Fide also set in motion a structured process to determine challengers to the world title so that whoever won in The Hague faced the challenger next. Regional tournaments or “Zonals” were set up to work as a qualifier for the intercontinental competition known as the “Interzonal”. The top finishers of the Interzonal qualified for the Candidates tournament, over a three-year cycle.

The five-player five-cycle round-robin World Championship in The Hague ended with Botvinnik crowned the world champion in 1948.

In 1950, 10 players participated in the first Fide Candidates that took place in Budapest.

Battle of Curacao: Draws, drama & the Cold War

At the height of the Cold War, eight of the world’s best chess players landed on the tiny Caribbean Island of Curacao for a Candidates tournament that ran for two months. It featured a young, ascendant American, Bobby Fischer. Tournament favourite Mikhail Tal – who’d become the then youngest world champion at 21 – had to be taken to the hospital after 21 rounds and withdrew from the competition. In his book on the match ‘Curacao 1962 – The Battle of Chess Minds that Shook the Chess World’, Jan Timman wrote of Fischer and compatriot Pal Benko coming to blows over the services of a second and Fischer lodging an official protest with the tournament committee suggesting that Benko be fined/expelled from the event.

Fischer – he eventually played a World Championship a decade after Curacao – alleged that the top three Soviet players in the tournament, Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres and Efim Geller, worked out short, pre-arranged draws amongst themselves so that they could focus their energies on him. He further claimed that the trio even audibly coached their compatriots during their games against him. The final tournament standings – Petrosian, Geller, Keres and Fischer (in that order), lent heft to Fischer’s claims. It’s still considered among the most infamous accusations of collusion.

The Candidates tournament subsequently switched to knockout matches.

When a Candidates match was decided in a casino

Robert Hubner of West Germany and Vasily Smyslov of the Soviet Union were deadlocked at 7-7 after their four drawn tie-break games in the 1983 Candidates quarterfinal. It had been preceded by a 5-5 tie in regulation. Armageddon wasn’t yet around at the time and FIDE’s rules provisioned for a draw of lots in tied score situations.

With scores even after 14 games, organisers did what might sound somewhat unhinged today— they decided to head to a nearby casino, spin the roulette wheel, and leave the outcome to chance. Hubner, however, wasn’t quite on board with the idea. He chose not to go to the casino and instead left Velden, south Austria, where the match was being played.

At the casino, Smyslov picked red. If the ball landed in the red slot, Smyslov would win, and if it landed in the black slot, Hubner would be declared the winner. On the first spin, the ball landed on zero, which is neither red nor black on the roulette wheel. On the second spin, chance favoured Smyslov, and the ball landed in the red number three slot. Smyslov moved into the Candidates semi-final. At 62 years old, he remains the oldest Candidate to this day.