Tilburg 1984

For seven years the Interpolis tournament had been won only by Soviet grandmasters and Hungary's Lajos Portisch. In 1984 Tony Miles — England's first over-the-board grandmaster — swept past them all, scoring an unbeaten 8/11 to finish a point and a half clear of the field. It was hailed as the finest British tournament result achieved up to that time.

◇Another elite dozen

The eighth Interpolis tournament was a Category XIV round-robin with an average rating of 2596. Miles faced Alexander Beliavsky and Vladimir Tukmakov of the Soviet Union, former World Champion Vasily Smyslov, Hungary's Zoltán Ribli and Lajos Portisch, West Germany's Robert Hübner, Yugoslavia's Ljubomir Ljubojević, Sweden's Ulf Andersson, and the Dutch trio of Jan Timman, Gennadi Sosonko and John van der Wiel.

Every previous edition had gone to the Soviet bloc: Karpov five times, Beliavsky once, and Portisch once. No Western player had ever won at Tilburg.

◇Eight from eleven, unbeaten

Miles produced the tournament of his life: five wins, six draws, no losses, for 8/11. Behind him a four-man group — Beliavsky, Hübner, Ribli and Tukmakov — shared second place on 6½, a full point and a half back, one of the widest winning margins ever seen at this level. As ChessBase later recorded, Miles thereby "became the first player from the 'West' to win the Interpolis Super Tournament in Tilburg".

Miles had won the Slater award as Britain's first grandmaster in 1976, at 21; Tilburg 1984 was the high point of the English chess boom he had started. He showed it was no accident the next year, returning to Tilburg in 1985 to share first with Hübner and Viktor Korchnoi, famously playing part of that event lying on a massage table because of back trouble.