A short blog post dedicated to the final tournament in the long career of the 6th World Champion. To mark the 75th anniversary of the Leidsch Schaakgenootschap (the Leiden Chess Club), attempts were made to organise a match between Mikhail Botvinnik (USSR) and Bobby Fischer (USA) that would take place in the spring of 1970. Preparations…
The biographical work Akiba Rubinshtein by Yu. S. Razuvaev & V. I. Murakhevri, published in Moscow by the state publishing house Fizkultura i Sport in 1980, is generally considered to be one of the most important books written in the latter part of the twentieth century. Here, for example, is what Boris Gelfand has to say…
A blog post dedicated to the dramatic 1986 Candidates’ match between Artur Jussupow (USSR) and Jan Timman (Netherlands), which was won by the Soviet grandmaster by the score of 6:3 (+4, -1, =4). It features translations of the contemporary annotations by Jussupow’s trainer, Mark Dvoretsky, supplemented by notes and comments by the two players. Artur…
A blog post dedicated to a forthcoming work on the ‘Match of the Century’, written in collaboration with ‘Chess Informant’, featuring some background to the event and extracts from the new book. The ‘Match of the Century’, between teams representing the USSR and the ‘Rest of the World’, took place in the capital of Yugoslavia,…
A short blog post dedicated to the marathon encounter between Nigel Short and Valery Salov from the Linares tournament of 1990, plus some brief information on Salov’s chess career. The 8th in the series of Linares super-tournaments took place almost exactly 30 years ago, from February 18th to March 3rd, 1990. 1st place in the…
A short blog post dedicated to Nezhmetdinov’s celebrated victory against Polugaevsky from the 1958 RSFSR Championship, featuring a translation of annotations by the winner as well as some brief background to the event in Sochi. The championship of the RSFSR (the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) was one of the more important events in the…
A blog post dedicated to the Tal v. Larsen Candidates’ Semi-final of 1965, featuring translations of Tal’s annotations to nine of the games of the match, plus some background to the event. The Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen was appearing in the Candidates’ Semi-final by virtue of his Quarter-final victory over Borislav Ivkov of Yugoslavia by…
A blog post dedicated to the final decisive game between the 2nd and 3rd World Champions, featuring a translation of Capablanca’s annotations from the Soviet tournament book, and some reminiscences on the background to the game by Yakov Rokhlin. The 3rd Moscow International tournament took place in the summer of 1936. The first two events…
A short blog post dedicated to two remarkable defensive achievements of the 6th World Chess Champion, played within a couple of years of each other in 1950s. Translations of his annotations to the games are available to download. Mikhail Botvinnik was one of the game’s greatest analysts. His ability to get to the essence of…
A blog post dedicated to the appearance of two of the leading Soviet grandmasters in the international tournament at Venice, 1950, featuring translations of Smyslov’s and Kotov’s annotations to some of their games from the event, as well as extracts from Kotov’s report on the tournament from the Soviet Chess Yearbook. The 2nd round at…
A blog post dedicated to the later games of the outstanding Soviet grandmaster, Lev Abramovich Polugaevsky (1934-1995), with his contemporary annotations from the Soviet chess press. The early and middle years of Polugaevsky’s career are well covered by two magnificent books, published in English in the 1980s by Pergamon Press. The first, which was a…
A blog post featuring a translation of Mikhail Gurevich’s annotations to his spectacular victory over Julian Hodgson from the 1989 European Team Championship, with some personal recollections from the event. The European Team Championship held in Haifa in 1989 was the first such event for six years, and the first to be held on the…
