Efim Geller

Efim Petrovich Geller (1925-1998) is one of the strongest soviet/ukrainian chess players ever.

Born on the March, 8 of 1925 year in soviet ukrainian city Odessa.

Grandmaster (1952), Champion of USSR (1955, 1979),
4-times Champion of Ukraine
7-times (!) Olympic Champion as a player of the USSR Team.
Winner of dozens of super-tournaments.

Participated in World chess championship candidates tournament / matches for 6 times.
He shared 2-3 places in the candidates tournament in 1962 (only half-point behind Tigran Petrosjan).
Played in semifinal candidates match in 1965 (lose to Boris Spassky).

Great chess theoretician, big specialist in King`s Indian, Sicilian and Ruy Lopez openings.
Geller was a coach to World Champions Boris Spassky and Anatoly Karpov.

He was a consultant in openings for Garry Kasparov during his champions match vs Nigel Short in 1993.

In his native city Odessa a street was named after Efim Geller.

GM Mikhail Botvinnik, 6th World Champion
Before Geller, none of us understood properly modern Indian and Kings Indian schemes...

GM Garry Kasparov, 13th World Champion:
“Petrovich” gave me a piece of advice how to avoid Marshall Counterattack played by Nigel Short
It was amazing but then I have earned 3 out of 3 in Ruy Lopez and actually won a match in 1993 thanks to that..

GM Geller has brilliant victories over 7 (!!) World Champions (Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosjan, Spassky, Fisher and Karpov).

He was often called a “nightmare of champions” and wrote a book “How to beat World Champions”

Author idea and text

for this blog is

Alexandr Matlak @AlexanderMatlak