Manila 1976 Interzonal

Manila was the second of the two 1976 Interzonals, and it was a triumph for the Brazilian star Henrique Mecking, who won the twenty-player round-robin on 13/19 and qualified once more for the Candidates matches.

◇The Manila Interzonal

Held at Manila from June into July 1976, this was the companion Interzonal to Biel in the 1976–78 World Championship cycle, its leading finishers advancing to the Candidates matches. Twenty players contested nineteen rounds, seventeen of them grandmasters, with a field that included Vlastimil Hort, Lev Polugaevsky, former world champion Boris Spassky, Ljubomir Ljubojević, Vitaly Tseshkovsky and the local hero Eugenio Torre.

For the Philippines it was a big occasion as host, and for the visiting stars a hard fight for a small number of qualifying places.

◇Mecking again

Henrique Mecking, who three years earlier had won the Petrópolis Interzonal at home in Brazil, took first place here too. He finished clear on 13/19, ahead of Hort and Polugaevsky, who tied on 12½ to fill the remaining qualifying places. It was the second consecutive Interzonal that Mecking had topped, confirming him as one of the strongest players in the world in the mid-1970s.

Mecking, Hort and Polugaevsky advanced from Manila to the 1977 Candidates matches, joining the qualifiers from Biel in the hunt to challenge Anatoly Karpov.