12th Soviet Championship: Smyslov

I am poring through the games of Vasily Smyslov from the beginning. My iPad has an old database of his games that I downloaded from Guenther Ossimitz's megasite several years ago. There are some available games missing from this database, and the game scores are not always reliable. ChessBase's newest database--I have Big Database 2011 (the full database without annotations)--is also missing some games. Some gaps can be filled by games from RUSBASE 1920-1994.

Smyslov emerged upon the chess scene on the eve of World War II when he won the national junior championship in 1938 and then tied for first in the Moscow Championship. In his first Soviet Championship, he placed third behind Andor Liliethal and Igor Bondarevsky. His games from that event concern me today. We start with his games as Black.

Read the rest at http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2011/04/12th-soviet-championship-smyslov.html

Exclusive to the chess.com version, however, I offer this full game. The final diagram in my blog post comes from this game after White's 36.Nc5. Smyslov's endgame technique is instructive.