I only met Smyslov once. It was in 1980 and I and he was there for the Copenhagen Cup. I played in the group below him so we never met otb. Some of my friends played him though. One different feature about him was that he never did post-mortems.
Of his games I mostly remember the ninth game of the World Championship with Botvinnik 1954. It ended 12-12 but Botvinnik retained the title.
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6219
We regret to announce the passing of Vasily Smyslov, who died on 27th March 2010 in Moscow, just three days after his 89th birthday. This information was passed to us by Boris Spassky, who had just returned from Moscow. "Vasily was one of the great chess geniuses of the twentieth century," Spassky said. "For me there were four titans of chess in the Soviet Union after the Second World War: Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres and Bronstein"
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 and Lasker, visited his native city of Moscow. At the age of 16 he won the All-Union boys' championship, and at 17 he shared first in the Moscow City Championship. At 19 he came third in the unrestricted USSR Championship. There followed a string of successes that caught the eye of world champion Alexander Alekhine, and he became internationally known when he beat Samuel Reshevsky twice in the famous USSR vs USA radio match in 1945.