Vladimir Tukmakov

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Vladimir Borisovich Tukmakov (born March 5, 1946 in Odessa) is a Jewish-Ukrainian chess grandmaster. He gained the International Grandmaster title in 1972.

His career first blossomed when he helped and then led the USSR to consecutive wins of the World Student Team Championship from 1966 to 1972, bagging nine gold medals along the way.

In the 1970s and 1980s he progressed to the senior Soviet Russian team and was again on the multiple gold medal winning trail. In his only Olympiad appearance in 1984 he took team gold and in 1973, 1983 and 1989 he played in the European Team Championship, where his collective haul was an amazing 5 (three team and two individual) gold medals.

In international tournaments, his best results include 2nd (after Fischer) at Buenos Aires 1970, 2nd (after Karpov) at Madrid 1973, 1st= (with Jansa and Ivkov) at Amsterdam 1974, 1st at Decin 1977, 1st= (with Sax) at Las Palmas 1978, 1st at Vilnius 1978 and 1st at Malta 1980. At Yerevan 1982, he was 2nd (after Yusupov) and at Tilburg 1984, 2nd= (after Miles).

Of his many attempts to become Soviet champion he twice came very close; at Riga 1970 and at Moscow 1983, where he finished behind Korchnoi and Karpov respectively.

At the momentous London 1984 Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World clash, he made a surprising, but important contribution. Starting as a lowly reserve for the USSR team, he was asked to substitute for Smyslov on board 4 and then for Polugaevsky on board 3. The outcome was that he delivered the team a useful net plus score against Ljubojevic and Korchnoi.

Much less active as a player nowadays, Tukmakov nevertheless retains a high Elo rating (2560 at July 2006). Most recently, he was non-playing captain with the victorious Ukraine team at the 36th Chess Olympiad in Calvia (2004).