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Vasily Vasiliyevich Smyslov (Russian: Васи́лий Васильевич Смысло́в) (born March 24, 1921) is a Russian chess grandmaster, and was World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958.

He is known for his positional style and, in particular, for his precise handling of the endgame, but many of his games feature spectacular tactical shots as well. He has made enormous contributions to chess opening theory in many openings, including the English Opening, Grünfeld Defence, Ruy Lopez, and Sicilian Defense.

Smyslov was a fine baritone singer, only deciding on a career in chess after a failed audition for the Bolshoi Theatre in 1950. Later, he sometimes gave recitals during chess tournaments, often accompanied by fellow Grandmaster and pianist Mark Taimanov.

Smyslov played in the 1948 World Chess Championship tournament to determine who should succeed the late Alexander Alekhine as champion, finishing second behind Mikhail Botvinnik. (Since Botvinnik’s death in 1995, Smyslov has been the last survivor of this tournament.) After winning the Candidates Tournament in Zurich 1953, he played a match with Botvinnik for the title the following year. It ended in a draw, meaning that Botvinnik retained his title. Smyslov had again won the Candidates Tournament at Amsterdam in 1956, which led to another world championship match against Botvinnik in 1957. Assisted by trainers Vladimir Makogonov and Vladimir Simagin, Smyslov won by the score 12.5-9.5. The following year, Botvinnik exercised his right to a rematch, and won the title back with a final score of 12.5-10.5.

Smyslov didn’t qualify for another World Championship, but continued to play in World Championship qualifying events. In 1983, at the age of 62, he went through to the Candidates’ Final (the match to determine who plays the champion, in that case Anatoly Karpov), losing 8.5 – 4.5 to Garry Kasparov, who was 42 years younger, and who went on beat Karpov to become world champion in 1985. He had beaten Zoltan Ribli 6.5 -4.5 in the semifinal, but drew his quarter-final match against Robert Hübner 7 -7, with the advancing player (Smyslov) determined only by the spin of a roulette wheel.

In 1991 Smyslov won the inaugural Senior World Chess Championship. He has played no competitive games since the 2001 Klompendans Veterans versus Ladies tournament in Amsterdam. His Elo rating following this event was 2494. Nowadays, his eyesight is very bad.

Source page: Wikipedia under Wikipedia license

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 1:55 am and is filed under World Champions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.