There were two other cities bidding to host the event – Albena in Bulgaria and Tallinn in Estonia.
The resort is named after a female character from a tale by Bulgarian writer Yordan Yovkov.
Albena |
Albena Bakratcheva received her master's degree in Bulgarian and English literature from the St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia in 1984.
As an active tournament player in the 1960s and 1970s, he achieved many fine results, including sharing or winning outright first place at Sarajevo 1965, Copenhagen 1965, Titovo Uzice 1966, Hastings 1967/68, Havana 1969, Albena 1970, Kecskemet 1972, Brno 1975 (the inaugural Czech Open Championship – the title of Champion going to Vlastimil Hort on tie-break), Lublin 1976, and Dubna 1979.
In international competition, he has had many tournament victories, including Albena 1977 (and 1979), Plovdiv 1978 (and 1979), Varna 1986, Dieren 1990 (Open Dutch Championship), Beirut 2004 and Imperia 2005.
Minev's best international results were: third at Varna in 1960, second at Warsaw in 1961, tie for first at Sombor in 1966, and second at Albena in 1975.
"Albena" (1962) - libretto Peter Filchev (after the drama of Yordan Yovkov) and "Millionaire" (1965) were made into operas by Parashkev Hadjiev.
Among his great achievements are a 2810 performance rating at the 1998 Chess Olympiad and first place finishes at Pavlodar 1982, Moscow 1986, Albena 1986, Tbilisi 1986, London (Lloyds Bank Open) 1989, and in the 2003 European Individual Chess Championship in Istanbul.