Chigorin Memorial 1976

Two years after his commanding 1974 victory, Lev Polugaevsky returned to Sochi's Chigorin Memorial and found the race far closer: he shared first place with Evgeny Sveshnikov, then still an international master a year away from the grandmaster title, and only beginning to make his name as one of Soviet chess's sharpest opening theoreticians.

◇A crowded international field

The 1976 field again ran to sixteen players over fifteen rounds, 120 games in total. Beyond the co-winners, the entry included Vitaly Tseshkovsky, Hungary's András Adorján, the Soviet grandmaster Igor Zaitsev — who received his own grandmaster title that same year and is best known for the Ruy Lopez line that bears his name — Romania's Florin Gheorghiu, Gennadi Kuzmin, Efim Geller, the Dutch grandmaster Hans Ree, Bulgaria's Nikolai Kirov, Nukhim Rashkovsky, Nikolai Krogius, Cuba's Estévez Morales, Czechoslovakia's Vlastimil Jansa and Poland's Jacek Pokojowczyk.

◇A share at the top

Vitaly Tseshkovsky took clear third on 9½, half a point behind the co-leaders, with Adorján, Zaitsev and Gheorghiu tied for fourth on 9. For Polugaevsky, sharing first with Sveshnikov extended a personal history with the event stretching back to his win in its first Sochi-era edition in 1963 and his outright victory in 1974. For Sveshnikov, not yet a grandmaster, it was an early marker of the theoretical depth — worked out with Gennadi Timoshchenko through the 1970s — that would soon make his name attached to one of the most heavily analysed lines of the Sicilian Defence.