AThe Guardian London, Greater London, England Thursday, September 27, 1962 - Page 2
England finish sixth in preliminary world chess group 27 Sep 1962, Thu The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
England finish sixth in preliminary world chess group
Varna (Bulgaria), September 26
England finished sixth in their preliminary group in the World Chess Team championship and will now participate in the play-off for thirteenth to twenty-fourth places. Final results in Group D were:
—
Results in other sections were:—
Out of form
Czechoslovakia and Holland qualified for the final through having a better match point score than Poland. Among the 12 seeded teams only England failed to qualify for the final. One can scarcely blame selectors or captain when they choose the six most successful available players from the national championship and five of them are out of form in the vital tournament. Yet that is what happened here. It has been normal in previous world championships for one or two players to be below par, but, in Bulgaria, Penrose's fine results on top board received inadequate support from his colleagues.
Both Barden and Golombek showed the effects of lack of practice in the early round, while Clarke seemed stale and ran out of ideas in mid-tournament. Littlewood, in his first team tournament, seemed to be trying too hard to justify his label of a brilliant attacker and lost some games through impulsive play. Wade also lost games through overpressing, but he, like some of the others, showed signs of better form in the later rounds of the preliminaries, and England should do reasonably well in the classification tournament.
Penrose, who always produces his best form in team events, has excelled himself here and is well in the running for the prize for the best score on top board. He has 6½ out of 8 and is close behind the American teenage prodigy Bobby Fischer, who leads with 5½ out of 6, and Olafsson, of Iceland, with 8 out of 9. World champion Botvinnik has 4½ out of 6 and he, like all the other Russians, remains unbeaten.
In the finals of the team championship, the Soviet holders will play the United States one round from the end. If Botvinnik and Fischer meet, the Russian will have white. In the classification group the countries, in draw order are:—
England's toughest match is likely to be in the final round against Poland. The draw is a bad on, however, for Penrose's hopes of obtaining the grandmaster title. He is likely to have the black pieces against his three grandmaster opponents, O'Kelly (Belgium), Olafsson (Iceland), and Pomar (Spain). In the first round tomorrow England plays Belgium.
