A memorable upset: Wolfgang Uhlmann beats the world champion at the 1962 Varna Olympiad

by Johannes Fischer
5/9/2026 – Winning against the reigning world champion is always difficult. The first German player to achieve this feat after the Second World War was Wolfgang Unzicker, for many years the number one player in the Federal Republic of Germany. At the 1961 European Team Championship, he outplayed the then world champion Mikhail Botvinnik. Wolfgang Uhlmann, for many years the number one player in the GDR, was not to be outdone. In 1962, at the Chess Olympiad in Varna, he defeated Botvinnik - though not quite as convincingly as Unzicker had done a year earlier. | Image: Wolfgang Uhlmann in 1970 | Photo: Rob Mieremet, Anefo
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W. Uhlmann - M. Botvinnik, Varna Chess Olympiad 1962

Despite this defeat, the Soviet Union won the match against East Germany 2½–1½ and ultimately secured the gold medal in Varna convincingly. In the final, the Soviets finished with 31½ board points - the only points that counted at this Olympiad - well ahead of Yugoslavia, who scored 28 board points. East Germany finished 8th with 20½ board points, level with Romania and only just behind West Germany, who took 7th place with 21 board points.height="1"

Uhlmann's win against Botvinnik may have been somewhat fortunate, but in fact Uhlmann was in excellent form in Varna. He remained unbeaten and scored 12 points from 17 games (+7, =10). This gave him a score of 70.6%, which, in percentage terms, was Uhlmann's third-best result in the eleven Olympiads in which he took part.

His best percentage score came in 1964 at the Olympiad in Tel Aviv, where he scored 15 out of 18 (+13, =4, -1), or 83.3%, and won the gold medal for the best individual result on top board. At the 1966 Olympiad in Havana, he scored 13 out of 18 (+9, =8, -1), or 72.2%, and won bronze on board three - but Uhlmann was not to win any further Olympiad medals.

In 1962, Ulhmann defeated the reigning world champion in a classical tournament game. It would take more than twenty years, until 1983, before a German player repeated this feat.

In this video course experts examine the games of Bent Larsen. Let them show you which openings Larsen chose, where his strength in middlegames were, how he outplayed his opponents in the endgame & you’ll get a glimpse of his tactical abilities!
Bent Larsen (1935–2010) was the greatest chess player in Danish history, and for a time, the second-strongest player in the Western world behind Bobby Fischer. Between 1954 and 1971, he won the Danish Championship six times, and achieved numerous international tournament victories throughout his career. 
Free video sample: Introduction to Bent Larsen by Peter Heine Nielsen
Free video sample: Introduction to the Opening Section

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Topics: Mikhail Botvinnik, Varna 1962, Wolfgang Uhlmann
Johannes Fischer was born in 1963 in Hamburg and studied English and German literature in Frankfurt. He now lives as a writer and translator in Nürnberg. He is a FIDE-Master and regularly writes for KARL, a German chess magazine focusing on the links between culture and chess. On his own blog he regularly publishes notes on "Film, Literature and Chess".
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