Wijk aan Zee 1977 (Hoogovens)

The 39th Hoogovens tournament ended with a tie at the top that meant something: Efim Geller, the 51-year-old Soviet veteran, and Gennadi Sosonko, who had left the USSR in 1972 and now played for the Netherlands, finished level on 8/11. Sosonko went through the whole event unbeaten, a home win, while Jan Timman finished with five straight wins to take clear third.

◇Nine grandmasters at Wijk aan Zee

The top group of the 1977 Hoogovens tournament was again a twelve-player single round-robin — eleven rounds, sixty-six games — this time boasting nine grandmasters. Efim Geller, one of the great Soviet players of the postwar generation, was the marquee name; the field also included Jan Timman, Bojan Kurajica, Fridrik Ólafsson, Lubomir Kavalek, Anthony Miles, Gudmundur Sigurjonsson, Juraj Nikolac, Hans Böhm, Gert Ligterink and László Barczay, alongside the Netherlands' newest grandmaster, Gennadi Sosonko.

Sosonko's presence gave the event a local storyline. He had emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the Netherlands, and had only received the grandmaster title in 1976 — so Wijk aan Zee 1977 came at the very start of his life as a Dutch GM.

◇Geller and Sosonko share first

Geller and Sosonko finished tied on 8/11, half a point ahead of Timman. Sosonko went unbeaten through all eleven rounds, and a last-round draw was enough to keep him level at the top. For Geller, at fifty-one, it showed he was still as dangerous as ever.

Behind them Jan Timman produced the finish of the tournament, winning his last five games in a row to claim sole third on 7½ — a signal of the form that would soon make him the West's leading player. Kurajica took fourth on 7, with Ólafsson fifth on 6.