Biel 1985 Interzonal

The Biel Interzonal was one of three interzonal tournaments in the 1985 world championship cycle, each sending its best finishers to the Candidates. Rafael Vaganian won it without losing a game, and four players emerged from Biel to continue the cycle — the last of them decided only by a play-off.

◇Four tickets from Biel

Eighteen players contested a single round-robin of seventeen rounds at the Congress House in Biel, with four qualifying places for the Candidates at stake — a larger prize than the two-per-event of earlier cycles. The field mixed established grandmasters such as Lev Polugaevsky, Ljubomir Ljubojević and Ulf Andersson with rising talents including Andrei Sokolov and the twenty-year-old Nigel Short.

Rafael Vaganian set the pace and never gave it up. He finished on 12½/17, unbeaten across the whole event, a full point clear of the field. Yasser Seirawan took second on 11½ and Andrei Sokolov third on 11, all three qualifying comfortably.

◇A three-way tie, and a play-off

The fourth and final qualifying place produced a knot of three players. Nigel Short, John van der Wiel and Eugenio Torre all finished the round-robin level on 10½/17, and a play-off was needed to separate them for the last ticket to the Candidates. Short came through it to claim the place, launching the international career of the player who would one day challenge for the world title himself.

Because the playoff games are included with the tournament, a table worked out from all the games gives the three playoff players inflated totals and more games than everyone else. The real final order of the seventeen-round Interzonal is the one given here: Vaganian first and unbeaten, ahead of Seirawan, Sokolov and Short.