Portal:Chess/Selected biography archive
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[edit] July 15, 2007 - August 31, 2007
Image:Alekhine.jpg
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine (31 October 1892–24 March 1946) was a naturalized French chess grandmaster and twice the world chess champion, most often remembered for his fierce and imaginative attacking style and for his contributions to chess opening theory, including his 1921 development of a hypermodern eponymous defense.
Born in Moscow, Russia, to a landowner father and a privy counsellor mother, Alekhine was taught chess by his mother and older siblings Alexei and Varvara, and he played his first organized tournament, a correspondence event sponsored by the Russian magazine Shakhmatnoe Obozrenie, in 1902. Having in 1907 finished the Moscow championship in equal eleventh, behind Alexei's equal fourth, Alekhine won the city championship in 1908 and placed fourth in a tournament in Dusseldorf, Germany, later that year, notably defeating German master Count Curt von Bardeleben. Alekhine won eight amateur tournaments across the five subsequent years and in 1913 began to play regularly on the international stage, contesting matches with German master Edward Lasker (played in Paris, France, and London, England), and Cuban Grandmaster and future world champion José Raúl Capablanca, to whom Alekhine lost in St. Petersburg but whom he would defeat in 1927 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to earn the world championship title for the first time.
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[edit] June 1, 2007 - June 30, 2007; September 1, 2007 - September 30, 2007
Image:Seirawan0301 137.jpg
Yasser Seirawan (born March 24, 1960) is an American Grandmaster and chess author, best known as a player for having won the 1979 World Junior Chess Championship and four times between 1981 and 2000 the United States Chess Championship and as an activist for having in 2002 negotiated an ultimately-scuttled agreement to unite the world chess championship.
Seirawan was born in Damascus, Syria, to an Arab father and English mother and lived for a short time in Nottingham before immigrating with his family to the United States in 1967. He began playing chess aged twelve years and captured the Washington junior championship soon thereafter, in 1973. Seirawan honed his game over the years following at a Seattle coffeehouse frequented by Latvian chess master Viktors Pupols before winning the world junior championship at the age of nineteen. Seirawan defeated Swiss Grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi, then the world's second-ranked player, in a tournament in 1980 and was invited to train with Korchnoi in Switzerland in preparation for the latter's 1981 world championship rematch with Russian Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov; Seirawan would himself defeat world champion Karpov in 1982. Having won the United States championship jointly with Walter Browne in 1981, Seirawan won the title outright in 1986 and was a member of the bronze medal-winning United States team at the Chess Olympiad contested in Dubai in that year.
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[edit] April 21, 2007 - May 31, 2007
Image:Susan Polgar.JPG
Susan Polgár (born April 19, 1969, as Polgár Zsuzsanna; pictured in a simultaneous exhibition) is a Hungarian-American Grandmaster regarded, having been Women's World Chess Champion from 1996 through 1999 and having in January 2005 been ranked by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs as the world's top woman player, as one of the best female players of all-time.
Polgar was born and raised in Budapest and, with her sisters Judit and Zsófia, each herself eventually a world-class player, educated by her father, László, to become intellectually capable and versatile; she swiftly became a chess prodigy and learned the constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto, one of six languages in addition to her native Hungarian that she would come to speak. Although her freedom to travel to international tournaments was restricted by the communist government of György Lázár, Polgar became the world's top-ranked female player in 1984 and remained atop the FIDE rankings until January 1987 when, under pressure from the Soviet Union, the federation assigned 100 bonus Elo rating points to all players save Polgar because, it alleged, her rating was inordinately inflated because, unlike most top female players, she played mainly in male-dominated tournaments. Nevertheless, in January 1991, Polgar became the first woman to earn the men's International Grandmaster title by achieving three GM norms and a rating of better than 2500 points; Judit became the second such player ten months thence and became the youngest-ever Grandmaster.
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[edit] February 9 - April 21, 2007
Emanuel Lasker (December 24, 1868 – January 11, 1941) was a German World Chess Champion, mathematician, and philosopher born at Berlinchen in Brandenburg (now Barlinek in Poland).
Image:Emanuel Lasker.jpg
In 1894 he became the second World Chess Champion by defeating Steinitz with ten wins, four draws and five losses. He maintained this title for twenty-seven years, the longest tenure of any officially recognized World Champion of chess. He defended his title successfully against Steinitz (1896), Frank Marshall (1907), Siegbert Tarrasch (1908), Carl Schlecter (1910) and David Janowski (1910).
Lasker is noted for his "psychological" method of play in which he considered the subjective qualities of his opponent in addition to the objective requirements of his position on the board. Richard Réti even speculated that Lasker would sometimes knowingly choose inferior moves if he knew they would make his opponent uncomfortable, although Lasker himself denied this. But, for example, in one famous game against Capablanca (St. Petersburg 1914) which he needed to win at all costs, Lasker chose an opening that is considered to be relatively harmless — but only if the opponent is prepared to mix things up in his own turn. Capablanca, inclined by the tournament situation to play it safe, failed to take active measures and so justified Lasker's strategy. Lasker won the game. The game was a microcosm of Lasker's style; he invested little study in the opening, was tremendously resourceful in the middlegame and he played the endgame at the highest level. Indeed, even when Lasker was in his late 60s, Capablanca considered him the most dangerous player around in any single game.
[edit] July 25, 2006 - February 9, 2007
Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Rustam Qosimjonov in Uzbek, Рустам Касымджанов in Russian; born December 5, 1979) is an Uzbek International Grandmaster, well known for having finished second in the 1999 World Junior Chess Championship, for having won the first board bronze medal at the 34th Chess Olympiad in 2000, for having finished in third place in the 2002 Fédération Internationale des Échecs World Cup, and for having, as the 28th-seeded player, captured the 2004 World Chess Championship by winning a seven-round knockout tournament, having defeating, in the semifinals, future world champion and top-rated Bulgarian Grandmaster Veselin Topalov.
Having won the 1998 Asian Championship in Tehran, Iran, and having finished just behind Russian Grandmaster Alexander Galkin at the 1999 World Junior Championship, Kasimdzhanov, who, as an International Master aged just 17 years, was his nation's second reserve at the 32nd Chess Olympiad, contested in 1996 in Yerevan, Armenia, but who, just two years later, at the 33rd Chess Olympiad in Elista, Kalmykia, Russia, was his team's top player—compiling a 59 per cent winning percentage and losing just two of his eleven games—gained international prominence in 2000, when, at the 34th Olympiad, held in Istanbul, Turkey, he finished the tournament having conceded just five draws and no losses across his twelve games, accumulating a performance rating of 2719.
In August 2001, in view of his success at the Julian Borowsky Tournament, played in Essen, Germany, where he outpointed by one half-point German Grandmaster Christopher Lutz and Israeli Grandmaster Emil Sutovsky, scoring six-and-one-half points over nine games, Kasimdzhanov achieved an Elo rating of 2708, placing himself thirteenth in the world; he would ultimately spend eighteen months ranked in the world's top fifteen and would fall out of the world's top fifty players for three months between 2000 and 2006. Kasimdzhanov finished first in the qualification round for the 2002 World Cup of Chess, ahead of Indian Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand and Chinese Grandmaster Xu Jun and finishing behind only Anand and Russian Grandmaster Alexey Dreev in the final group.
Kasimdzhanov again enjoyed success in 2003, defending his 2001 Vlissingen, Netherlands title by finishing one half-point ahead of Romanian Grandmaster Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu and Moldovan Grandmaster Viorel Iordachescu and one full point ahead of Dutch Grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov, before finishing in equal second at a tournament conducted in Sarajevo, Serbia and Montenegro, tying Armenian Grandmaster Sergei Movsesian and former third-ranked Spanish Grandmaster Alexei Shirov just one half-point behind Dutchman Ivan Sokolov.
[edit] June 21, 2006 - July 25, 2006
Image:Michael Adams grandmaster.JPG
Michael Adams (born October 17, 1971) is an English International Grandmaster, a two-time British chess champion, and a two-time world chess championship runner-up who, having attained a Fédération Internationale des Échecs rating of 2755 in July 2000, recorded the 17th-best rating in the 26-year history of FIDE Elo ratings, and who was ranked as one of the world's top five players for more than four years.
Adams, born in Truro, Cornwall, Adams won the British chess championship aged just 17 years and quickly ascended to the top level of professional chess, finishing equal first with Indian Viswanathan Anand in a 1993 Professional Chess Association World Championship qualifying tournament contested in Groningen, the Netherlands, advancing to the knockout round and defeating Dutchman Sergei Tiviakov before losing to Anand. Adams also competed in the 1994 FIDE candidates tournament, falling to Israeli Boris Gelfand in the first round.
In 1997, Adams participated in the FIDE World Championship, a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament, winning five matches, including against countrymate Nigel Short, a former candidates and interzonal winner who had faced Russian Garry Kasparov for the world championship in 1993 and Russian Peter Svidler, the defending Russianchess champion, before drawing a match and speed chess tiebreak, each 2-2, with Anand and ultimately losing a sudden death speed chess game.
In 2004, Adams once more advanced to a world championship knockout final, notably defeating Azerbaijani Teimour Radjabov, who, aged just 15 years, had defeated Kasparov at the 2003 Linares chess tournament, and Armenian Vladimir Akopian, the 1991 world junior champion and 1999 knockout finalist who had defeated Adams in the 1999 semifinals, before falling, 4½-3½, to 28th-seeded Uzbek Rustam Kasimdzhanov, in the final.
[edit] May 26, 2006 - June 21, 2006
Image:Botvinnik.jpg
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik (IPA: [mʲixa'iɫ̺ mʌi's̺ʲɛjɛvʲiʧʲ bʌt̺'vʲin̺n̻ʲik] Russian: Михаи́л Моисе́евич Ботви́нник) (August 17, 1911 - May 5, 1995) was a Jewish Russian International Grandmaster and three-time world champion of chess, known during his playing career as a calculating, tactical player and during his teaching career for having mentored Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, and Vladimir Kramnik.
Born in Kuokkala, near Vyborg, the son of a dental technician, he first came to the notice of the chess world at the age of 14, when he defeated the world champion, José Raúl Capablanca, in a simultaneous exhibition.
Progress was fairly rapid and by the age of 20, Botvinnik, already a Soviet Master of some years standing, won his first Soviet Championship in 1931. This feat was to be repeated in 1933, 1939, 1941, 1945 and 1952.
At 24 years of age, Botvinnik was competing on equal terms with the world's elite, chalking up international tournament successes in some of the strongest tournaments of the day. First (equal with Salo Flohr) at Moscow 1935, ahead of Emanuel Lasker and Capablanca. First (equal with Capablanca) at Nottingham in 1936 and third (behind Reuben Fine and Paul Keres) at the prestigious AVRO tournament of 1938. In 1941, he won a tournament designating him the title of "Absolute Champion of the U.S.S.R". Botvinnik defeated Paul Keres and future world champion Vassily Smyslov, amongst other strong Soviet grandmasters such as Isaac Boleslavsky and Andor Lilienthal, to win the title.
[edit] April 14, 2006 - May 26, 2006
Image:David_Ionovich_Bronstein.jpg
David Bronstein (Дави́д Ио́нович Бронште́йн) (born February 19, 1924) is renowned as a leading chess grandmaster and writer. He was born in Bila Tserkva near Kiev, Ukraine. Described as a creative genius and master of tactics by pundits and plaudits the world over, Bronstein provides ample evidence that chess should be regarded as part science, part art.
His first international tournament success occurred at the Saltsjobaden Interzonal of 1948, in which he qualified for the Candidates Tournament of 1950 in Budapest, becoming the eventual winner over Isaac Boleslavsky in a (Moscow) play-off. This period saw a meteoric rise in Bronstein's development as he prepared for the world title challenge match, in 1951.
[edit] March 11, 2006 - April 14, 2006
Image:Veselin Topalov Sofia Airport 24.10.2005.pic-01.jpg
Veselin Topalov (IPA: [vɛs.ɛlɪn toʊ'pɑlˌɑf], Bulgarian: Веселин Топалов) (born March 15, 1975) is a Bulgarian chess player. He became the FIDE World Chess Champion by winning the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005. However, his title is disputed; some regard Vladimir Kramnik as the World Chess Champion because of his victory over Garry Kasparov in 2000. Furthermore, an allegation of computer assisted cheating during the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 was made, although no evidence has yet been produced to support the claim that Topalov cheated.[1]
[edit] February 8, 2006 - March 11, 2006
Image:Spassky.jpg
Boris Vasilievich Spassky (also Spasski) (Бори́с Васи́льевич Спа́сский) (born January 30, 1937) is a Russian chess player and former world champion.
He was born in Leningrad and learned to play chess at the age of five.
At age 18 he won the World Junior Chess Championship held at Antwerp, Belgium, and became a grandmaster.
Spassky was considered an all-rounder on the chess board, and his "universal style" was a distinct advantage in beating many top Grandmasters. For instance, in his Candidates Final match (the match which determines who will challenge the reigning world champion for the title) against Mikhail Tal the legendary tactician (Tbilisi, 1965) Spassky managed to steer play into quiet positions, avoiding Tal's tactical strength. This led to his first World Champion match against Tigran Petrosian in 1966. Spassky lost the match with 3 wins against Petrosian's 4 wins, with the two sharing 17 draws. In the next two years, his playing success again gained the right to challenge Petrosian. Spassky's flexibility of style was the key to his eventual victory over Petrosian by two points in the 1969 World Championship—by adopting Petrosian's negative style.
[edit] December 25, 2005 - February 8, 2006
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera (November 19, 1888 – March 8, 1942) was a Cuban world-class chess player in the early to mid-twentieth century. He held the title of world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. Referred to by many chess historians as the Mozart of chess, Capablanca was a chess prodigy whose brilliance was noted at an early age.
According to Capablanca, he learned the rules of the game at the age of four by watching his father play. He said he noticed his father make an illegal move with his knight, accused him of cheating, and then demonstrated what he had done. It may be unlikely that he learned all the subtleties of en passant pawn capture, castling rules, and underpromotion by observation alone, since some of the positions which demonstrate the rules are uncommon. (Viktor Korchnoi, in his 1974 Candidates final match with Anatoly Karpov, famously asked the arbiter if castling was legal when the castling rook was under attack — it is.)
[edit] September 4, 2005 - December 24, 2005
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer (born March 9, 1943) is a former world chess champion, who on September 1, 1972 became the only American to win the FIDE World Chess Championship. He lost the title when he refused to defend it on April 3, 1975. Garry Kasparov wrote that of all world champions of chess, the skill gap between Fischer and his contemporaries was the largest in history . Fischer is also well known for his eccentricity, unconventional behavior, and outspoken, anti-Semitic political views. Despite his prolonged absence from competitive play, or perhaps because of it, Fischer is still among the best known of all chess players.
[edit] August 22, 2005 – September 4, 2005
Magnus Øen Carlsen (born November 30, 1990) is a Norwegian chess player who came to international attention after winning the C group of the Corus Chess Tournament in January 2004 at the age of thirteen. In the April 2005 FIDE list, he has an Elo rating of 2548, making him Norway's number two. Being a chess prodigy, he has been referred to as "The Mozart of chess", like Capablanca about 100 years ago. According to the Chessmetrics rating system Carlsen at the age of 13 years and 8 months was number 4 ever among chess players at that age, beaten only by Judit Polgar, Sergey Karjakin and Péter Lékó.
[edit] August 8, 2005 – August 21, 2005
Anatoli Yevgenyevich Karpov (Анато́лий Евге́ньевич Ка́рпов) (born May 23, 1951) is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He is the most successful tournament player of all time, and as of July 2005 he has 161 first-place finishes to his credit. From 1978 to 1998 he played in every FIDE World Championship match. His overall professional record is 1,118 wins, 287 losses, and 1,480 draws in 3,163 games. His peak ELO rating is 2780.
[edit] July 19, 2005 – August 7, 2005
Image:PaulMorphy.jpg
Paul Charles Morphy (June 22, 1837 - July 10, 1884), "The Pride and Sorrow of Chess," is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his time, an unofficial World Champion and, is considered by many, including some grandmasters (see below) the greatest chessplayer who has ever lived. He was also the first American superstar, acknowledged by the entire world as the preeminent figure in a cultural or intellectual field. He was the first American to supersede the achievements of the Old World, whose culture, up until that point, was considered superior to anything produced by the New World. He is also considered the first, modern chess prodigy of Western Chess since the creation of the modern rules of chess in Italy in 1475.
[edit] July 12, 2005 – July 18, 2005
Image:Garry_kasparov.jpg
Garry Kimovich Kasparov (Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров, pronounced with stress falling on the second syllable: kas-PA-rov) (born April 13, 1963) is a chess grandmaster and one of the strongest chess players in history. His 2851 ELO rating in the July 1999 FIDE rating list is the highest rating ever achieved. As of July 2005, Kasparov's 2812 ELO rating places him highest on the FIDE listing [3]. Ranked first in the world for nearly all of the 20 years from 1985 to 2005, Kasparov was the last undisputed World Chess Champion from 1985 until 1993; and continued to be "classical" World Chess Champion (of the PCA and WCA) until his defeat by Vladimir Kramnik in 2000.
Kasparov announced his retirement from professional chess on March 10, 2005, instead devoting time to politics and to do "everything in my power to resist Vladimir Putin's dictatorship." He is a leading member of the Committee 2008: Free Choice, a group of liberal opposition leaders.
