Soviet Cheating in FIDE Competition: 1952 Stockholm Interzonal

Chess is a sport just Hockey, but you're sitting in a chair, looking at a board.  Like hockey, chess has plenty of checks.  (and Czechs, for that matter.)

Some of this is period-specific.  If you didn't grow up during the Red Peril 1 then the dynamic of the Soviet Machine and its effects on competition during the 50s-80s will escape you, no matter how many times you watch Rocky IV.

That picture is from Rocky III, but the point - as such - remains. Just imagine a 6'3" russian guy sitting across from Stallone.

For some Back in the Day historical perspective, here's a documentary about Canada beating the Soviets.  

USSR vs Canada ... Canada wins.  -   I don't know if its true that Canadians remember where they were when Canada beat the Soviets ... in hockey.  But there are people on camera saying that's the case.  Grown men weeping as they tell their sons about the sporting event.

The analogy of top athletes not giving max performance in preliminaries in order to 'get through to the finals' is apt.  I hadn't considered the issue from that perspective.  If I took a look at what the Ethiopian Olympic Teams marathon qualifying times were, I'd probably find that they weren't running flat-out every race.

There's a case to be made that Bobby Fischer's win in Iceland is responsible for the Flyers beating the Soviet Red Army team during the US Bicentennial.  

Philadelphia Flyers vs. Soviet Red Army, 1976 - Flyers win.

It's a stupid case, but I'm sure that someone can make it.
_

1 - Sure, the US was the Red,White,and,Blue Peril from the much-less freedom-loving perspective.

If one player is winning a lot of games in a tournament, draws tend to leave you further and further behind.

Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura quite commonly draw their games against each other.  Is this "collusion"?

Bump for Santero

Cheating* or no cheating - and the problem was virtually eliminated after they went over to the format with candidates matches - until Fischer, the Soviets were as a rule head and shoulders above the rest. There's very little doubt about this. I think the chances of the West in the pre-Fischer era would have been considerably improved had Reuben Fine not chosen to retire from professional chess in the late 1940s (as one wit put it: 'a great loss for chess, and a draw at best for psycho-analysis'). Arguably, Fine was actually a better, more rounded player than Reshevsky, who was not only an extreme time-trouble addict, but also generally not well versed in the openings (and he was never able to rid himself of these two flaws). No time-trouble addict has ever become World Champion.

* A practice which can take many forms. To briefly return to the Canada v USSR summit series in ice hockey mentioned by TadRodderTots: I'm sure anyone who remembers Bobby Clarke's deliberately vicious ankle slashing (on the order of John Ferguson, the Canadian coach) on Valery Kharlamov (generally considered the player of the series) in game 6, fracturing a bone in his ankle, would agree. Up to that point the Soviets had dominated the Summit series, but lost the last three games narrowly. In the 1974 Summit Series, when Kharlamov once again was able to play unimpeded, the Soviets won the series easily. As always, things are hardly ever entirely black or white ...

We saw the old Soviet model of "win at all costs" and "by any means" repeated by the Russian Sports establishment at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Interesting. I hate quick draws, they are against chess spirit. Unfortunately, it is hard to find a GM that hasn't commited that sin ever. Even Magnus Carlsen has. An extreme case is Radjabov-Mamedyarov. They have drawn all his games quickly. Is an embarrasement and a disrespect to the other contenders.

Korchnoi was no friend to the Soviet Union. If he denied it, and the game doesn't look "fixed", chances are, it wasn't fixed. 

Btw, Fischer's record against Korchnoi wasn't great. Over a lifetime, including blitz games they were even at 3-3 with 4 draws (without blitz games, they were still tied, 2-2-4). Korchnoi would have been a very difficult opponent for Fischer. 

Today, players are more or less free to travel anywhere they want and get whatever sponsors they can. GM Kovalyov (of the dress code violation scandal) complained on social media he couldn't get any sponsors and within 24 hours he was linked up with several potential sponsors. He is currently privately sponsored and also sponsored by Alberta Chess Association and the Edmonton Chess Club. 

If Kovalyov can get sponsors, just about anyone can.

The Stockholm Interzonal is a pretty straightforward case of "Russian collusion."

All of their draws were pre-arranged so that no one Soviet had an advantage or disadvantage versus the other Soviets.  Their final placement depended on their individusl results versus the non-Russians.  And they each got the benefit of 5 extra "free days," as compared to the rest of the players.  FIX!!

Put your thinking cap on Wayne. Every Soviet vs Soviet game was drawn.  The FIDE was so embarrassed they included the best scoring few non-Soviets in the Candidates tournament at Zurich.  Do those US GMs  play as a bloc in FIDE's individual tournaments?

Yes, just like Carlsen and Caruana, fixed draws to make more money

Take a look at the tournament. The top five players were all Soviets. The next was Stahlberg, who scored 50% against the Soviets, with three draws, a win and a loss. The Soviets were clearly the best players in the Interzonal tournament. This is borne out by the results in Zurich in 1953. All five Soviets qualified for the Candidates, as did the next three, Stahlberg, Szabo, and Gligoric. 

In Zurich, the non-Soviets who qualified from the interzonal and Euwe finished in the cellar. 

To say that the Stockholm tournament was somehow rigged is to ignore the fact that the best players qualified for the Candidates, and the botton three players who qualified performed the worst, along with an aging Max Euwe. 

The thought of so many Soviets making it to the Candidates (Smyslov, Bronstein, Boleslavsky and Keres ha already qualified) made FIDE announce that instead of five players, they would advance eight players! 

I believe the top players may have been suggested to draw each other. I don't see it as cheating. Kotov won his first eight games! He didn't need anything more. Even if the Soviet players had gone all out against each other, they were so far better than the rest that they still would have won.

Has anyone ever watched the early rounds of the long distance races in the Olympics? The top runners, almost all of whom are from Africa, often work together to conserve energy and qualify for the final. 

When players are accused of cheating, you can't use their high, final scores as evidence that they were simply the best and didn't need to cheat.

I mean, this should be obvious.

it doesn't surprise me tbh =) 

I didn't use the Stockholm results, I used the Zurich result. In Zurich, the only place that mattered was first place. In Stockholm, the top five slots mattered (and after the tournament, the top eight were allowed to advance). There was such a huge gap between the quality of the Soviet players and the Stockholm non-Soviet qualifiers that the non-Soviet qualifiers finished in the bottom four along with the aged Euwe. At least Euwe showed he could still play in the early rounds. He had some very good games in the first ~four rounds of the event.

The Soviets were best at this time ...

The US Championship is going on right now. The top five seeds have drawn all their games against each other, with almost every game being decided before move 40. Clearly, they must be cheating. 

Or, it's a normal strategy to try to beat the fish in the tnmt, especially when the prize for 5th is really the same as it is for 1st. 

Does anyone know if there is any politic (drug use etc) in competitive chess? I know there is in esports, 

Probably not, just asking. 

FIDE implemented drug testing in 2001.  The most famous incident was at the 2008 Olympiad where Ivanchuk lost his game, and then one of the officials came up, and asked him to take a drug test.  He got angry, and stormed off, but FIDE didn't fine him or anything.

There is no doubt the Soviets had the lion's share of strong, state-sponsored players at the time.  There is also no doubt the their political overlords recognized the propaganda value of their chess-playing tools.

The comparison of the 1952 interzonal with the US Championship is falacious.  There is no "team" to play for in a national championship, unlike the Interzonal.  Even the annual Soviet title tournaments were "every man for himself."

In contract bridge, that was not always the case.  There was a highly publicized hand signal scandal involving an Italian team in the early 1960s.

It has been conclusively proven Armstrong was a blood doper.  His results were invalid.