Poland vs USSR — Lodz 1955

The first European Team Chess Championship was decided by preliminary groups played out over two years, and Poland were drawn in Group 1 alongside the Soviet Union, Finland and East Germany. Finland and East Germany withdrew. That left a single fixture standing between Poland and the final — ten boards, played home and away in Łódź, against the Soviet team. The Soviet Union won it 17–3.

◇The group that emptied out

The preliminaries for the first European Team Championship ran from April 1955 to October 1956, each group a double ten-board round robin with the group winner going through to the final. Group 1 lost two of its four entrants before a move was played: Finland and East Germany both withdrew, reducing the whole qualifying section to one home-and-away meeting between Poland and the Soviet Union at Łódź.

The Soviet Union duly qualified, and went on to win the final at Vienna in 1957.

◇Ten boards, twice over

The twenty games preserved here are the whole match — ten boards played twice, dated 23 and 24 July — and their results add up to the official 17–3. The Soviet line-up in the first round was Vasily Smyslov, David Bronstein, Isaac Boleslavsky, Mark Taimanov, Salo Flohr, Semyon Furman, Vladimir Simagin, Viktor Korchnoi, Evgeni Vasiukov and Igor Bondarevsky, with Alexander Nikitin coming in for Simagin on the second day. Poland fielded Bogdan Śliwa, Edward Arłamowski, Alfred Tarnowski, Stanisław Gawlikowski, Roman Dworzyński, Stefan Brzózka, Andrzej Pytlakowski, Zbigniew Doda, Kazimierz Plater and Józef Gromek, with Gedali Szapiro and Ignacy Branicki replacing Doda and Plater in the second round.

Poland's three points came from one win and four draws. The win was Pytlakowski's, over Furman, on the second day; the draws were Furman with Brzózka, Taimanov with Gawlikowski, Nikitin with Szapiro, and Dworzyński with Flohr. Smyslov, Bronstein and Boleslavsky each won both of their games.