Wednesday, May 21, 2008

What happened next II


Matulovic-Bilek, Sousse Interzonal 1967, position after Black's move 37...Qc3-c6.

White now played either 38.Bf3?? or 38.Kg1, depending on how you look at it.

Graham Clayton on Chessville explains:
Matulovic played 33.Bf3??* and before Bilek could play 33...Rxf3 Matulovic put the Bishop back on e2 and played 33.Kg1.
He explains:
[Matulovic claimed] that he was merely adjusting the pieces on the board (J'adoube). His opponent, Hungarian GM Istvan Bilek complained to the tournament director, but no action was taken. The game ended in a draw. After this incident, Matulovic was given the unflattering nickname of "J'adoubovic".
Playthrough Matulovic-Bilek

[* = Clayton has the move numbering wrong here, but the account of events is, I believe, otherwise accurate - ejh]

6 comments:

Jonathan B said...

What a cad.

Jonathan B said...

Out of interest, how did Matulovic's career progress after this incident? Is he still around?

Morgan Daniels said...

Matulovic? Dogmatic scum. He hated my lord and saviour Duncan Suttles, therefore I can't find a single good thing to say about him. He would regularly explode when confronted with things that diverted at all from his perfect bloody super-shiny 'classical' chess. Witness:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=113581

Anonymous said...

Still playing according to
http://ratings.fide.com/tourarc.phtml?codt=26&field1=900362

Born in 1935 - so now over 70.

He was involved in another incident at the next Interzonal. In the last round, he was playing Taimanov who needed a win to qualify for the Candidates' matches. By all accounts, he took the game very casually almost as if he intended to lose.

At about this time it was reported that he was going to be locked up - not for the J'adoube incident but for dangerous driving. It cannot have been for very long since he was a very active player in the early 70s.

RdC

ejh said...

Yes

ejh said...

(Sorry to Morgan and RdC for the amount of time it took to moderate their comments today: just for once all three of us must have simulataneously had a busy day!)