How The Openings Got Their Names - Mar Del Plata

FELLOW Battersea Chess Club member Joe Skielnik returned earlier this month from a tournament in Spain where a mutual friend "had a couple of games on the white side of the King's Indian, Mar del Plata Variation."
Joe asks: "It appears it was first played in Najdorf v Gligoric, 1953, in Mar del Plata. However, I thought it might have had something to do with the carnage arising from the Battle of the River Plate in 1939, which sometimes appears similar to what happens on the chessboard in this line.
"Unfortunately I can find no connection, so only a mysterious coincidence?"
The Mar del Plata Variation is an important line of the King's Indian that arises after the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 Nc6 8. d5 Ne7.

Starting tabiya of the Mar del Plata

There are more than 3,000 games with this position in ChessBase's 2019 Mega database, and the Mar del Plata is important enough to get its own chapter - the first - in Robert Bellin & Pietro Ponzetto's classic Mastering The King's Indian With The Read And Play Method (Batsford, 1990).
The variation is named after a tournament held in 1953 in the Argentine coastal resort of  Mar del Plata, where Gligoric used the black side of the variation to beat Najdorf and Eliskases, and Najdorf was later held to a draw in the same variation by Trifunovic.
But the moves had been known since the 1920s at least, becoming suddenly fashionable in 1952 when it was played at the olympiad in Helsinki and in the Soviet and Hungarian championships.
At first the variation did not do well for Black - Taimanov with the white pieces beat both Aronin and Bronstein in the 1952 Soviet championship.
It was Black's success with the variation in Argentina that gained it the name Mar del Plata (the name of the city literally translates from Spanish as Sea of Silver, but in this case Plata refers to the country's Plata region rather than directly to silver or the River Plate - Rio de la Plata in Spanish).
Here is one of the variation's less-successful outings.
Ivan Nemet (GM2412) - Spanton (2250*)
Simul, Villars-sur-Ollon, 2001
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 9.Ne1
This was White's response from the earliest days of the variation, although its popularity has been challenged by 9.b4. The idea of both moves is to press on with c5 (after Nd3 or Be3 in the case of 9.Ne1) and to attack on the queenside before Black can organise a mating attack on the kingside.
9...Nd7 10.Be3
This has become more popular than the immediate Nd3.
10...f5 11.f3 f4 12.Bf2 g5 13.Rc1 h5 14.c5 Nf6?
Correct was 14...Nxc5, and if 15.b4, the move I was worried about, then 15...Na6. Black need not fear 16.Bxa6?! bxa6 as Black's kingside attack is enhanced by the absence of White's light-square bishop.
15.cxd6 cxd6 16.Nb5 Ne8 17.Nxa7 Kh8
17...Bd7 was played in Stefan Docx (2384) - Slavisa Brenjo (2495), European Championship 2009, but 18.Qb3 Ng6 19.Qxb7 Rb8 20.Nc6 stopped Black getting a strong-enough attack to compensate for his disappeared queenside (1-0, 37 moves).
18.Nxc8 Rxc8 19.Rxc8 Qxc8 20.Nd3 Rg8 21.Kh1 Bf8 22.Qc1 Qd7 23.Qc3 g4??
A blunder, but Black's kingside attack is getting nowhere anyway.
The remaining moves were:
24.Nxf4 Nf6 25.Ne6 gxf3? 26.Qxf3 Ng4? 27.Nxf8 1-0
*My Swiss rating at the time.