In accordance with the purpose announced in our most recent entry, namely, to provide coverage of various events of importance previously unreported in these pages, we now turn our attention to the 5th Congress of the Bohemian Schachbund, which took place at Jungbunzlau (Mladá Boleslav) from August 27th - September 8th. First prize in the National Masters' Tournament, a ten-man round-robin, was claimed by Karel Hromadka with 6 1/2 points, followed closely by Frantisek Treybal with 6. Third through fifth places were shared by Ladislav Prokes, Oscar Tenner, and Richard Reti, each with 5 1/2, with the remaining contestants finishing as follows: J. Dobias 5, F. Schubert 4, A. Pokorny 3, A. Vitkovsky 2 1/2, and V. Dyk 1 1/2. The hard-fought nature of the competition may be gauged by the fact that only a single point separated the entire top half of the field. We note as a curiosity that Hromadka, the new Bohemian Champion, made only an even score in his four games with the White pieces, but tallied 4 1/2 points from five games with Black.
The concurrent Hauptturnier, which saw 16 players vie for the coveted Master title, was won by Karel Opocensky with the score of 11 1/2, followed by Metodej Gargulak with 10 and E. Jacobsen and K. Mitovsky with 9 1/2 each. Opocensky has thus earned the right to participate in future Master events, and we hope to see him soon enter the lists. May his career be a long one.
We have just today received a packet containing dozens of games from both the National Masters' Tournament and the Hauptturnier, a large harvest that will require some time and labor in order to separate the wheat from the chaff. For the moment two games have caught our eye, one each by Hromadka and Opocensky, which the reader will find appended below.
Hromadka here produces the stunning 19...Re2! to defeat Pokorny. White might have resigned forthwith; his decision to prolong the contest well beyond the limits of sportsmanship in no way detracts from the brilliance of Black's conception.
En route to the capture of the Master title Opocensky bested Hrdina in this lovely miniature, a game certain to appear in periodicals worldwide:
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