Excerpt from Gaprindashvili's book I Prefer Risk (Предпочитаю риск). A Bow to the Veterans The first woman world champion Vera Menchik was tragically killed on 27th June 1944 during the Nazi bombing of London. After Alexander Alekhine suddenly d...
After reading some comments on Nigel Short's article about difference between men and women, I realized I had surprisingly strong feelings about this issue. I, frankly, don't see Short's comments as sexist, but that's probably because of my diffe...
Original in Russian here. The World Championship finalist Natalia Pogonina told in the interview for Gazeta.ru about her path in the Sochi tournament, the secrets of Olympiad victories, Russian-Ukrainian friendship and the benefits of chess for c...
A 2005 interview of Vladimir Kramnik where he discusses all previous chess world champions of the time. The Russian original is here: http://www.e3e5.com/article.php?id=190 FROM STEINITZ TO KASPAROV I got to know the legacy of chess classics rel...
Another game of mine. As usual, nothing particularly great, but I really liked the pawn ending.
An interesting insight as to why Korchnoi was disliked by Soviet authorities and chess society in 1970s. He didn't exactly make many friends. How I fell out with Korchnoi and Karpov In 1973, there were two Interzonals in Leningrad and Petropolis...
This game was played in a double round-robin playoff for the 1956 USSR Championship. Averbakh and Spassky were both tired after the main tournament, and this obviously showed. Annotated by Yuri Averbakh.
Vasily Panov. "Before the New Difficult Battles" (The part about Petrosian - Korchnoi match is omitted) Now let's discuss the match between two foreign stars: Robert Fischer, 28, USA, and Bent Larsen, 36, Denmark; it's kind of inappropriate now ...
From the old 64 newspapers. As a foreword: prognosis by Igor Bondarevsky, Boris Spassky's coach. Incredibly spot on, both about Fischer and Korchnoi. Many commentators and especially the public wait impatiently for the match between Robert Fisch...
THE TOURNAMENT WINNERS' PROFILES Lyudmila Rudenko The World Champion, Master of Sports Lyudmila Vladimirovna Rudenko was born on 27th July 1904 in Lubny, Ukraine, in a teacher's family. Father taught her chess when she was 10 years old. In 1925,...
This is an excerpt from an old book about women's chess in USSR by the third Women's World Champion Elizabeth Bykova. The article was written in 1950 or 1951, before Bykova herself became a champion. WOMEN'S WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP IN MOSCOW Si...
Read part 4 here. HAMBURG 1910 INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT 18 players took part in the Hamburg international tournament, including Schlechter, Marshall, Tarrasch, Spielmann, Teichmann and those who represented Russia at the time - Alekhine, Nimzowi...
Part 3 here 1909 CHIGORIN MEMORIAL The international tournament in St. Petersburg was dedicated to memory of the great Russian chess player Mikhail Chigorin who died in 1908. So, Chigorin's dream of organizing a big international tournament in R...
Part 2 here After I got back to Moscow from Karlsbad, one Moscow chess player came to me and told me that he saw a future chess world champion in one teenager. I've always been wary of promising "wonderkids", thinking that it was impossible to tr...
Read part 1 here. In 1905, I visited Warsaw and Lodz. In Warsaw, I visited the Semadani Cafe, the city's chess center. I remember meeting Poland's strongest players. First of all, I should name the elderly chess veteran Szymon Winawer. He was ...
I don't play particularly good, but sometimes I do manage to put out a nice game. I'm satisfied with the attack, though the opponent did help me at a couple of points.
Amsterdam, Netherlands Euwe (Netherlands) vs. Alekhine (France) 1935 (some games) Alekhine (France) vs. Euwe (Netherlands) 1937 (some games) Karpov (Russia) vs. Timman (Netherlands) 1993 FIDE (some games) Arnhem, Netherlands Karpov (Russia) v...
Read part 1 here. I TOLD YAKOVLEV: "YOU LIKE KASPAROV? OK, YOU CAN BUILD HIM A GOLDEN PALACE OR SOMETHING, BUT WHY DO YOU BADGER ME?" I think that your confrontation with Garry Kasparov was also very sharp and political. You've already mentio...
http://www.gordon.com.ua/tv/a-karpov/ There was always much more politics than sports in the Soviet chess. For the ruling Communist regime, chess has become a symbol of unrivaled intellectual prowess. The whole big country, from Moscow to fart...
Ages are given for the day of the first game. Winner of the match (or champion retaining his title) is in bold. Kramnik vs. Leko still remains the only World Championship match in history in which both players weren't 30 yet. Average age 1892: ...
Article by chess historian Sergey Voronkov. http://www.chesspro.ru/_events/2008/voronkov_rc45.html Right after the 13th USSR Championship, the first wartime chess conference took place. All the points of its agenda were fair for the time: intens...
Yesterday, I won two games in a row, with White and Black, with a typical Tal-like "not fully correct" sacrifices at f7 and f2, with opponents failing to find best defence. Just a funny turn of events, nothing too flashy here.
Here are memories of Fyodor Ivanovich Dus-Chotimirsky, an old-time Russian and Soviet player. Take note that those were published in old Soviet times, soon after Stalin's death. In that time, to get non-fiction books published, anyone and everyone...
Some fragments from his memoirs. Games added by me. World Champion's sparring partner When we were preparing for a match against USA, Botvinnik offered me to play a couple of training games. Of course, it was interesting to train with a World Ch...
