Bled 1961

◇A jubilee for Alekhine

The International Jubilee Grandmaster Tournament at Bled was staged in the autumn of 1961 to commemorate Alexander Alekhine's celebrated victory there thirty years earlier, in 1931. Twenty players — fifteen of them grandmasters — contested a single round-robin of nineteen rounds from 3 September to 3 October, making it one of the strongest tournaments of its decade.

The line-up ranged across generations and continents: Tal and Keres, Tigran Petrosian and Efim Geller, Svetozar Gligorić, Miguel Najdorf, and the young Bobby Fischer among them.

◇Tal recovers, Fischer stays perfect

Tal had lost his return match with Botvinnik earlier that year, but at Bled he was again in his element, scoring 14½ out of 19 with eleven wins. His only defeat came at the hands of Fischer — the first time the American had beaten him. Yet it was Tal who finished a clear point ahead.

Fischer took second on 13½, the only competitor to go through the entire event undefeated, with eight wins and eleven draws. Behind them, Petrosian, Gligorić and Keres shared third to fifth on 12½, and Geller followed on 11½ — a top of the table that reads like a roll-call of the world's best.

◇A tournament that entered the literature

Bled 1961 became one of the celebrated tournaments of the pre-Curaçao years, remembered both for Tal's resilience after losing the crown and for Fischer's flawless run at eighteen. Its games were later collected in a tournament book annotated by several of the participants themselves, including Tal, Keres, Petrosian, Geller and Gligorić.