A Spassky Story: When did this happen?

I was looking at Boris Spassky quotes earlier today (another post will follow with the why), and came across the following anecdote, which I traced to a ChessBase article about the 2008 M-TEL Tournament.

Some positive news came from Sofia with the arrival of Boris Spassky. The legendary GM went straight into the commentary studio and started to entertain the public. “The best tournament that I have ever played in was in 1950”, he said. “It was great – a waiter came to you during the game, and you could order anything you wanted to drink (even some vodka, if you liked). Pity, there are no longer tournaments organized in this manner…” – ”But didn't anyone protest against this?” asked someone in the public. “Oh, yes, and it was the strongest player of the event, Vasily Smislov.” Spassky kept on pleasing the audience with his colorful memories, excellent chess and witty remarks with short pauses.

I had mis-remembered Spassky's birth year, thinking he had been born in 1939 or 1940, so I wondered about that. Surely a ten or eleven year-old wasn't ordering vodka? Of course, re-reading it, he doesn't claim he had vodka, but still I looked it up, and he was born January 30, 1937. But still!

So I looked in my database, and the earliest game I found between Spassky and Smyslov (a reasonable but not fool-proof way of finding tournaments they both played in) showed that they most likely first met in a tournament held in Bucharest, in 1953. That was the tournament in which Spassky earned his IM title, and at the age of 16 organizers might have even been comfortable offering him vodka. (I have no idea what the customs were in the Soviet Union, from which Spassky hailed, or in Romania, where the tournament was held.) All the other tournaments they played in during the 1950s were much to formal for this to have occurred: everything from Soviet Team Tournaments to a Candidates Tournament. Most of the rest of the tournaments they played in together through the years also seem to meet that condition. Even the 1962 Capablanca Memorial in Cuba was likely too serious for that.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone else might have any ideas about when this tournament may have taken place. I can't find anything else about the conditions of the Bucharest tournament, which was VERY strong. I guess I'll try Edward Winter's site.

PS One site I saw listed the tournament participants and the national flags for some of them. Weirdly, it gave the CURRENT national flags. So Petrosian, for example, is listed as being from Armenia. Armenia was never an independent country during his lifetime, and he should have been shown with a Soviet flag.      / pedantry

A raw treat: archival footage of the 1948 Match-Tournament for the World Championship

The commentary is in Dutch, but it's still neat.

The "Grand Chess Tour" is a joke.

I've tried to write this post a couple of times now. The topic just makes me too angry for coherence. The Grand Chess Tour, consists of the Stavangar Tournament in Norway, the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, and the London Chess Classic (not in Ohio). Players accumulate points in the overall standings based on their performances in the individual tournaments.

After the final tournament, concluded a week ago, Magnus Carlsen was declared the winner of both the London leg and the Tour as a whole. This last was due entirely to the most asinine tie-breaks ever used in the history of Chess. (Yes, I am including the time a Roulette wheel was used to settle the outcome of a Candidates Match between Huebner and Smyslov.) You can read about that The Chess Mind, in the perfectly named post Grand Chess Tour Tiebreaks: A System Than Which None Lesser Can Be Conceived.

The upshot is this: Despite only finishing on +1 for the tour, Carlsen finished first  in the overall standings, ahead of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (+2), Hikaru Nakamure (+3) and Anish Giri (+5). To add to the absurdity, Carlsen finished behind or tied with Giri and MVL in all three stages of the tour, yet still finished ahead of them in the standings! (Call Magnus the Tortoise of Chess.)

MVL really got hosed more than once, though. As recounted elsewhere, despite beating Giri in a tiebreak, he actually finished behind Giri in London. All these tiebreak shenanigans resulted in MVL missing out on qualifying for next year's Grand Chess Tour. So, not only does he get lesser prizes than deserved this year, he will miss out on next year's Tour as well, meaning he will miss three of the best (and most lucrative) tournaments of the year, plus whatever money he might have won for his placement in the tour next year. 

This is an egregious ... hmm, how to put this without using foul language? This is an egregious mistreatment of a player for playing well. But the Grand Chess Tour had already set a precedent for this when they didn't invite Karjakin this year, despite Karjakin having won the first two editions of the Stavangar Tournament ahead of Magnus Carlsen. So at least the GCT is consistent!

What a joke.