USSR vs Hungary — Lipetsk 1968

◇A republic match, not a national one

The match is listed here as 'USSR vs Hungary', but it was actually played between the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and Hungary's national team, a friendly below full national level, which chess historians keep separate from USSR fixtures such as the Olympiad or the European Team Championship. Board one for the Russian side was Lev Polugaevsky, born in Byelorussia and by 1968 one of the top Soviet grandmasters; he played for the USSR at seven Chess Olympiads between 1966 and 1984, winning gold every time except 1978, and within a year of Lipetsk he tied for first in the 1968–69 USSR Championship and won the playoff the following spring.

Hungary's team mixed the veteran Gedeon Barcza with Lajos Portisch, already the country's number one for years, along with Istvan Bilek, Laszlo Barczay and Istvan Csom (an International Master since 1967) on the men's boards, and a women's section that included the 19-year-old Zsuzsa Verőci, who went on to play for Hungary in ten Women's Olympiads between 1966 and 1992.

◇Hungary wins going away

The official result was Hungary 35½, Russian SFSR 28½ — a seven-point margin. Andromeda's archive shows Polugaevsky himself went unbeaten across his six games, scoring 4½ with wins over Istvan Csom, Gyozo Forintos and, playing Black, Gedeon Barcza, and draws against Istvan Bilek, Laszlo Barczay and Lajos Portisch. His personal form could not carry the rest of the Russian team to victory.

◇The games

The official score means 64 games were played; 52 of them survive here, from both the men's and women's sections. The other twelve haven't been found, so this page gives the full 64-game total and Hungary's official winning margin rather than a score from the surviving games.