Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Olympic Trap
The 8th Chess Olympiad took place in Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 1939 and 39 years later that same country hosted this event again.
Hungary won the 23rd Olympiad of 1978 ahead of USSR and USA. And the Hungarian team is the protagonist of today’s trap because two of their members had the pleasure of playing it in the same event.
First was GM Lajos Portisch, who in round 9 faced Bulgarian GM Ivan Radulov. Later in round 14, GM Zoltan Ribli played against Yugoslavian GM Ljubomr Ljubojevic. In both games, the same following position arose on the board after Black’s 13th move.
It’s really unusual that the same trap appears more than once in the same event. Moreover considering that it happened in games played between high level players.
In spite of being a well known trap, 45 years later it has been again in the chess headlines. The reason being that the Polish GM Jan-Krzystof Duda was the victim of it in his game against GM Wesley So in round 1 of the WR Chess Masters (Dusseldorf, Germany 2023)
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