Efim Petrovich Geller was born March 8th, 1925 in Odessa, Ukraine. He learned how to play chess as a young man, and was one of the top 10 players in the world for over 20 years. He earned his doctorate in Physical Education. He won four Ukrainian...
Mikhail Nejemevich Tal was born in Riga, Latvia on November 9, 1936. He was a genuine child prodigy: at three years old he read perfectly, at five he multiplied three digit numbers in his head. His father was a physician and Tal became interested ...
Right now I am playing in the Russian Club Cup. This tournament has a relatively long history, and accumulates top players not only from Russia, but from all over the world. The event is a round robin. Six main boards + two reserves for men, 4+2 f...
January 6, 2011 was a day I will remember well for a long time. I was currently playing in the Berkeley International, and I needed half a point from my next 2 games for my final GM norm. Although that day I lost to GM Erenburg and it wasn’t until...
Early Years Vasily Vasiliyevich Smyslov was born on March 24, 1921. He learnt chess at the age of six, and after studying books in his father's library, became really serious about the game at the age of 13, when two world champions, Capablanca a...
Paul Petrovich Keres was born on January 7, 1916, in Narva, Estonia. Keres first learned about chess from his father and older brother Harald. In 1935, Keres became the chess champion of Estonia, defeating Gunnar Friedemann for the title. Keres b...
David lonovich Bronstein was born February 19,1924 in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine, to a Jewish mother and father. Growing up, he learned chess at age six from his grandfather. As a youth in Kiev, he was trained by the renowned International Master Alexa...
Early Years Tigran Petrosian was born to Armenian parents on the 17th of June, 1929 in Tiflis, Georgia, which was then a member of the Soviet Union. As a young boy, Petrosian was an excellent student and enjoyed studying, as did his brother Hmaya...
Emanuel Lasker was born on December 24, 1868 at Berlinchen, son of a Jewish cantor. At the age of eleven he was sent to Berlin to study mathematics, where he lived with his brother Berthold Lasker eight years his senior, who taught him how to play...
When I tell people who are not into chess that physical training is very important, they often don’t take it seriously, or are deeply surprised. At first sight, it seems that chess is purely a brain game which has nothing to do with endurance or p...
He started playing chess at age 10, became a Candidate Master at 18, a Master at 24… At that point, it seemed as if this player would never emerge as a truly exceptional chess talent. He had the habit of playing fast, 15-20 minutes per game was ty...
Most people, when delving into the culture of chess, tend to write and read about the Great chess players, the Great tournaments and the Great games. But chess is about far more than those select few things. In fact, a very real part of th...
Ratmir Kholmov was born in the small town of Shenkursk on the 13th of May, 1925. Due to his father’s work he travelled a lot from a young age. At the age of 12 he was left alone with his mother, and this was the time when he started playing chess....
The tournament at Nottingham in 1936 included fifteen players in a round robin requiring fourteen games. The competitors represented three generations. The standings are: 1-2 Capablanca and Botvinnik 10, 3-4-5 Fine, Reshevsky, Euwe 9.5, 6 Alekhine...
Aivars Gipslis is not a well known name among chess fans around the world, but was a remarkable person dedicated to our beautiful game. Born on February 8, 1937 in Latvia, he started playing chess at the age of twelve, which was normal by that tim...
The old World Champion Emanuel Lasker, who was born in 1868, was playing the merely mature Grigory Levenfish, who was born in 1889, at Moscow 1936. This event had 10 players who met in a double round robin. Lasker and Levenfish were playing in the...
Grandmaster in 4 years! Jorgen Bent Larsen was born in Thisted, Denmark, on March 4, 1935. He learned to play chess when he was 6 but did not begin to play seriously until he was 17. By age 19 he became an International Master, and two years late...
Alexander Ilyin-Zhenevsky (or Ilyin-Genevsky) born in St Petersburg on the 28th of November 1894 is considered the founding father of the Soviet Chess School! From the enthusiasm of Ilyin-Zhenevsky, the official attitude to the game was brought. H...
Viacheslav Ragozin, born October 8 1908 in St Petersburg, Russia, was a respectable Soviet chess Grandmaster and the second World Correspondence Chess Champion in the period 1956-1959; additionally, he was an International Arbiter of chess, chess ...
At Moscow 1935 twenty players engaged in a nineteen round event. At the end, Salo Flohr and Mikhail Botvinnik were on top with 13 points. Flohr was undefeated and had seven wins to Botvinnik’s nine, but Botvinnik had two losses. Emanuel Lasker was...
Eugene Znosko-Borovsky, born on 16 August 1884 in St. Petersburg Russia, was a multifaceted personality with different natural aptitudes: chess master, teacher, author besides music, dramatic and literary critic. In the latter two he achieved dist...
Emanuel Lasker was born in 1868 and won the World Championship in 1894. He held the title until 1921. He still holds the record as the longest reigning world champion. He stopped playing in tournaments in 1925. After nine years he returned at Zuri...
Boris Kostic, born on the 24th of February 1887 in Vrsac in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a Serbian Grandmaster and one of the greatest travelers in chess history, traveling the globe in the days before the beginning of co...
One of Emanuel Lasker’s farewells to chess was at Moscow 1925. The aging former world champion (1894-1921) would not appear in tournaments for another nine years. The winner at Moscow was Efim Bogoljubow with 13 wins, 5 draws, and 2 losses (15.5/2...
