Chess in the 80s 14: The World Open (10/1988)

Gather around kids and let me tell you a story about how slowly chess news used to travel back in the day.

Last week (Cit80s 13): we saw it reported that Max Dlugy had won a tonne of cash at the 1988 World Open. It took another month, though, before we saw an actual tournament report and any games from the event.  OK it was in America, but it’s still astonishing to look back and see that the World Open ended a few days into July and it wasn’t until the October issue of CHESS that we really got to know what had happened.

Incidentally, check out "Let them eat cake" half way through the second page. Prize money, and how you divvy it up, is still an issue even today. I won the unrated prize at Benasque a few years ago. I remember very specificially being rather embarassed walking up to collect my 200 euros in prize money and then watching a whole bunch of  GMs pick up 20 euros each for sharing 8th to 20th or some such. Admittedly, they’d have been getting conditions too, but still, it did all feel rather awkward.