Vasilij Vasil'evič Smyslov

Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov won two Soviet championships (1949 and 1955) and earned a total of 17 medals at the Chess Olympiad. He also won ten gold medals in his five participations in the European team championships. He passed away from cardiac arrest in 2010 at the age of 89. He learned to play chess from his father, Vasily O. Smyslov, a strong player, a master candidate. In 1938, at the age of seventeen he won the USSR junior championship. He achieved an excellent result in his debut at the Soviet championship (Moscow, 1940), coming 3rd with 13 out of 19, ahead of the reigning champion Mikhail Botvinnik. The Soviet Federation organized an additional tournament among the six best players of the 1940 championship, which was called the Overall Soviet Championship, one of the strongest tournaments ever held. The format saw each player face their opponents four times. The participants were Botvinnik, Keres, Smyslov, Isaak Boleslavs'kyj, Igor' Bondarevskij and Andor Lilienthal. Smyslov came third with 10 out of 20, behind Botvinnik and Keres. This result proved that Smyslov was a classy player with masterly strength at the age of twenty, a very rare achievement for the time. Smyslov participated in the 1948 tournament organized to determine the successor to Alexander Alekhine, who died in 1946, as world champion. He came 2nd behind Michail Botvinnik, scoring 11 points out of a possible 20. Candidates Tournament 1956: (from left to right) Miroslav Filip, Vasily Smyslov, Paul Keres, Herman Pilnik, David Bronštejn, Juchym Heller, Boris Spassky, Tigran Petrosyan, Oscar Panno and László Szabó. This result qualified him by right for the candidates' tournament in Budapest 1950, where he placed 3rd with 10 out of 18, behind Bronštejn and Boleslavskij, joint winners. Again, the result allowed him to be admitted to the next candidates tournament. In the meantime, he was awarded the title of international grand master, established by FIDE in the same year. After finally winning the candidates tournament in Zurich in 1953 with 18 out of 28, two points more than Keres, Bronštejn and Samuel Reshevsky, Smyslov played the match against Botvinnik for the world champion title the following year. Played in Moscow, the match ended in a draw (7 wins each and 10 draws) after 24 games. The rules of the time provided that in this circumstance the champion retained the title, Smyslov therefore had to attempt a new assault. Further victory in the candidates' tournament in Amsterdam 1956 led to a new world challenge against Botvinnik in 1957. Assisted by seconds Vladimir Makogonov and Vladimir Simagin, Smyslov won with the result of 12.5 to 9.5, becoming the seventh champion of the official world of chess. The following year Botvinnik exercised the right to a rematch that the rules allowed him and took back the title with a final score of 12.5 to 10.5. Even though Smyslov no longer qualified for the world championship, he continued to participate in the qualifying events and still achieved some good performances. In 1959 he was among the candidates, but came only fourth in the tournament in Yugoslavia, won by the rising star Michail Tal'. He did not qualify in 1962, but returned to the running in 1964, thanks to a joint first place in the interzonal tournament in Amsterdam (17 out of 23). However, he was defeated in the first round by Juchym Heller. Starting from 1968 he was among the collaborators of the chess magazine 64, under the direction of Tigran Petrosyan In 1983, at the age of 62, he reached the final of the candidates' matches (a match that designated the challenger who would then face the champion, Anatoly Karpov at the time). He drew the quarter-final against Robert Hübner 7 to 7 (a spin of the roulette wheel was used to decide which of the two would go through) and beat Zoltán Ribli 6.5 to 4.5 in the semi-final. The 1984 final in Vilnius pitted him against Garri Kasparov, who was a third of his age. He lost 4.5 to 8.5. Kasparov then beat Karpov in 1985 and became the new world champion. His last appearance as a candidate was at Montpellier 1985, where he failed to get through. Smyslov represented the Soviet Union nine times in the Chess Olympiad, from 1952 to 1972, only being excluded in 1962 and 1966. He contributed greatly to team gold medals on every occasion he played, winning a total of eight personal medals. His total of 17 Olympic medals won, both personal and team, is second only to that of Garri Kasparov, who holds the record with 19 medals (15 of which are gold). The total result is an impressive 90 out of 113 (+69 = 42 -2). This useful performance of 79.6% is as of January 2009 the fifth best ever among those who have participated in at least four Olympics. Smyslov also represented the Soviet Union in five European team championships, emerging with a perfect medal tally: five team gold medals and five personal gold medals. Smyslov won two Soviet Championships. He finished tied for 1st-2nd in the 17th Soviet Championship in Moscow in 1949. He repeated the result in the twenty-second edition of Moscow 1955 together with Juchym Heller, but lost the playoff. In his youth Smyslov was a good baritone. Only after failing an audition at the Bolshoi Theater in 1950 did he decide to dedicate himself completely to his career as a chess player. On one occasion he declared: «I have always lived between chess and music». Before a match against Botvinnik he sang in front of an audience of thousands. During tournaments he occasionally performed, sometimes accompanied by his friend, grandmaster and pianist Mark Tajmanov.