Rovinj/Zagreb 1970 (Tournament of Peace)

Six weeks after leading the Rest of the World against the Soviet Union in Belgrade, Bobby Fischer swept into the Tournament of Peace and made the strongest field Yugoslavia could assemble look ordinary. He scored 13 out of 17, finished two full points clear of a four-man chasing pack, and lost only once — a result that announced the campaign which would carry him to the world title two years later.

◇The Tournament of Peace

The Tournament of Peace — Turnir Mira — brought eighteen players to the Istrian coast and then to the Croatian capital: eleven rounds were played in the seaside town of Rovinj before the tournament moved inland to Zagreb for its final six. Ten grandmasters came from abroad and eight represented Yugoslavia, among them former World Champions Vasily Smyslov and Tigran Petrosian and the perennial Yugoslav standard-bearer Svetozar Gligorić.

The clear favorite was 27-year-old Bobby Fischer, then top of the FIDE rating list and fresh from his four-game win over Tigran Petrosian on top board in the USSR versus the Rest of the World match in Belgrade. Rovinj/Zagreb was his first classical tournament after that match, and he played to win it convincingly.

◇A runaway, spoiled once

Fischer led throughout and won going away, finishing on 13/17 — a full two points ahead of the quartet of Vlastimil Hort, Gligorić, Smyslov and Viktor Korchnoi, who shared second on 11. Petrosian took sixth with 10½. Fischer's only defeat came at the hands of the Yugoslav grandmaster Vlatko Kovačević in a Ruy Lopez; without it, contemporaries noted, the winning margin would have been wider still.

Vlastimil Hort had the tournament's other distinction: he was the only player to come through all seventeen rounds undefeated, drawing twelve games on his way to a share of second. The American Walter Browne, newly a grandmaster, was also in the field as part of a genuinely international line-up drawn from the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the United States.

“Fischer finished two full points ahead of a four-player chasing pack; his sole loss, to Vlatko Kovačević, was the only blemish on an otherwise commanding performance.”