Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov (; 24 March 1921 – 27 March 2010) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster who was the seventh World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958. He was a Candidate for the World Chess Championship on eight occasions (1948, 1950, 1953, 1956, 1959, 1965, 1983, and 1985). Smyslov twice tied for first place at the USSR Chess Championships (1949, 1955), and his total of 17 Chess Olympiad medals won is an all-time record. In five European Team Championships, Smyslov won ten gold medals.
Smyslov remained active and successful in competitive chess well over the age of sixty. Despite his failing eyesight, he remained active in the occasional composition of chess problems and studies until shortly before his death in 2010. Besides chess, he was an accomplished baritone singer.
Early years Smyslov was born in Moscow, into a Russian family. He first became interested in chess at the age of six. His father, Vasily Osipovich Smyslov, worked as an engineering technician and had represented the St. Petersburg Technical Institute in intercollegiate chess competitions. The senior Smyslov, who had also studied chess for a time under the tutelage of Mikhail Chigorin, became his son's first teacher, and gave him a copy of Alexander Alekhine's book My Best Games of Chess 1908–1923. The future world champion would later write that this book became his constant reference, and that "...I was later to read everything that my father had in his library: Dufresne's handbook, separate numbers of the Soviet chess magazines Chess and Chess Sheet, the text-books of Lasker and Capablanca, and the collections of games of Soviet and international tournaments. The games of the great Russian chess master M. I. Chigorin made an indelible impression on me; it was with interest that I read the various declarations on questions of strategy by A. I. Nimzovitch; I studied attentively the genius of prominent Soviet masters."Fine, R. (ed.), (1976). The World's Greatest Chess Games. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Smyslov's competitive chess experiences began at the age of 14, when he started taking part in classification tournaments. In 1938, when he was 17, Smyslov won the USSR Junior Championship. That same year, he tied for 1st–2nd places in the Moscow City Championship, with 12½/17. However, Smyslov's first attempt at adult competition outside his own city fell short; he placed 12th–13th in the Leningrad–Moscow International tournament of 1939 with 8/17 in an exceptionally strong field. In the Moscow Championship of 1939–40 Smyslov placed 2nd–3rd with 9/13.
War years In his first Soviet final, the 1940 USSR Chess Championship (Moscow, URS-ch12), he performed exceptionally well for 3rd place with 13/19, finishing ahead of the reigning champion Mikhail Botvinnik. This tournament was the strongest Soviet final up to that time, as it included several players, such as Paul Keres and Vladas Mikėnas, from countries annexed by the USSR following the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939.
The Soviet Federation held a further tournament of the top six from the 1940 event, and this was called the 1941 Absolute Championship of the USSR, one of the strongest tournaments ever organized. The format saw each player meet his opponents four times. The players were Botvinnik, Keres, Smyslov, Isaac Boleslavsky, Igor Bondarevsky, and Andor Lilienthal. Smyslov scored 10/20 for third place, behind Botvinnik and Keres. This proved that Smyslov was of genuine world-class Grandmaster strength at age 20, a very rare achievement at that time.
World War II forced a halt to most international chess, but several tournaments involving Soviet players only were still organized. Smyslov was exempted from military service due to being severely nearsighted, and he won the 1942 Moscow Championship outright with a powerful 12/15. At Kuibyshev 1942, he placed second with 8/11. In a strong field at Sverdlovsk 1943, Smyslov tied for 3rd–4th places with 8/14. In the 1943–44 Moscow Championship, Smyslov tied for 3rd–4th with 11½/16. He finished second in the 1944 USSR Championship at Moscow (URS-ch13) with 10½/16. He emerged as champion from the 1944–45 Moscow Championship with 13/16. By this juncture, Smyslov had advanced into the group of the top three Soviet players, along with Botvinnik and Keres, who were playing in Nazi-occupied Europe during the war.
As the war ended, organized chess picked up again. But Smyslov's form hit a serious slump in the immediate post-war period. In the 1945 USSR Championship at Moscow (URS-ch14), Smyslov was in the middle of the very powerful field with 8½/17; the winner was Botvinnik, with Boleslavsky and the new star David Bronstein occupying second and third places. At Tallinn 1945, Smyslov had the worst result of his career, scoring just 6½/15 in a not especially strong field. It was little better in the Moscow Championship of 1945–46, as he could only score 7½/15 for a tie of 7th–11th places, as Bronstein won. Then in the Moscow Championship of 1946, Smyslov scored just 8½/15, for a tie of 3rd–6th places, as Bronstein won again. During this period he scored just 31/62 in those four tournaments, for 50%.
Nevertheless, Smyslov's earlier strong results secured him one of the five Soviet places in the first really strong post-war international tournament, at Groningen, Netherlands, in August 1946. This event, the Howard Staunton Memorial, was won by Botvinnik with 14½/19, half a point ahead of former World Champion Max Euwe. Smyslov finished third with 12½/19, and this reconfirmed his status as one of the world's top players.
Once he was back playing in Soviet events, however, Smyslov found it tough going for a while. In the next Soviet Championship (URS-ch15, Leningrad 1947), he tied for 3rd–4th places with 12/19, as Keres won. At Pärnu 1947, Smyslov scored 8/13, tying for 4th–6th places, as Keres won again. At Warsaw 1947, Smyslov scored 6/9 to tie for 2nd–5th places; the winner was Svetozar Gligorić. In the Mikhail Chigorin Memorial tournament, Moscow 1947, Smyslov tied for 3rd–4th places, with 10/15, as Botvinnik won.
His results showed a consistent pattern of high finishes against strong company, but with virtually no tournament championships. Smyslov had never actually won an adult tournament (other than the Moscow City Championship) before he played in the 1948 World Championship Tournament.
World title challenger Smyslov was one of the five players selected to compete for the 1948 World Chess Championship tournament to determine who should succeed the late Alexander Alekhine as champion. His selection was questioned in some quarters, but this criticism was amply rebutted when he finished second behind Mikhail Botvinnik, with a score of 11/20.
With his second-place finish from the 1948 World Championship, Smyslov was admitted directly into the 1950 Budapest Candidates' tournament without needing to play in qualifying events. Smyslov scored 10/18 for third place, behind Bronstein and Boleslavsky, who tied for first place. Smyslov's third place automatically qualified him into the next Candidates' tournament. He was awarded the International Grandmaster title in 1950 by FIDE on its inaugural list.
After winning the Candidates Tournament in Zürich 1953, with 18/28, two points ahead of Keres, Bronstein, and Samuel Reshevsky, Smyslov played a match with Botvinnik for the title the following year. Sited at Moscow, the match ended in a draw, after 24 games (seven wins each and ten draws), meaning that Botvinnik retained his title.
World Champion
Smyslov again won the Candidates' Tournament at Amsterdam in 1956, this time by 1½ points. This qualified him for a second world championship match against Botvinnik in 1957. Assisted by trainers Vladimir Makogonov and Vladimir Simagin, Smyslov won the title, scoring 12½–9½. The following year, Botvinnik exercised his right to a rematch, and regained the title with a final score of 12½–10½. Smyslov later said his health suffered during the return match, as he came down with pneumonia, but he also acknowledged that Botvinnik had prepared very thoroughly. Over the course of the three World Championship matches, Smyslov had 18 wins to Botvinnik's 17 (with 34 draws), yet was only champion for a year. Nonetheless, Smyslov wrote in his autobiographical games collection Smyslov's Best Games, "I have no reason to complain of my fate. I fulfilled my dream and became the seventh world champion in the history of chess."
Later World Championships
Smyslov did not qualify for another World Championship, but continued to play in World Championship qualifying events. He was a Candidate in 1959, but finished fourth in the qualifying tournament held in Yugoslavia, which was won by the rising superstar Mikhail Tal. He missed out in 1962, but was back in 1964, following a first-place tie at the Amsterdam Interzonal, with 17/23. However, he lost his first-round match to Efim Geller.
In 1983, at the age of 62, he reached the Candidates' Final (the match to determine who plays the champion, in that case Anatoly Karpov), losing 8½–4½ at Vilnius 1984 to Garry Kasparov, who was 21 at the time, and who went on to beat Karpov to become world champion in 1985. He had beaten Zoltán Ribli 6½–4½ 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. His final Candidates' appearance was the Montpellier 1985 tournament, where he did not advance.
Soviet Championships Smyslov was a frequent competitor at the Soviet Championships and enjoyed some notable successes. In 1940, while still a teenager, he finished third behind Bondarevsky and Lilienthal. At the 13th Championship in 1944, he placed second behind Botvinnik and in 1947, shared third with Bondarevsky, finishing behind Keres and Boleslavsky.
He was a joint winner of the contest in 1949 and again in 1955 (with Bronstein and Geller respectively). Whilst the 1949 title was shared, the 1955 title was awarded to Geller after a play-off.
Much later in his career he showed that he could still mount a credible challenge; he took a share of third place in 1969 (behind Petrosian and Polugaevsky) and in 1971, was joint runner-up with Tal, behind Savon. He was ranked by FIDE as one of the top 15 players in the world from the late 1940s into the early 1980s, a stretch of almost 40 years.
Post-war tournament record Smyslov maintained an active tournament schedule throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, registering many top three finishes in some of the most prestigious tournaments of the period.
In 1950, he was second behind Kotov at Venice and in 1951, won the Chigorin Memorial, held in Leningrad. He shared third place with Botvinnik at Budapest (Maróczy Memorial) in 1952, behind Keres and Geller. In 1953, he won a training tournament in Gagra and finished third at Bucharest, behind Tolush and Petrosian. At the 1954–55 edition of the Hastings Congress, he shared first place with Keres. At Zagreb 1955, he was sole winner, two clear points ahead of the field. He continued his winning streak at Moscow's Alekhine Memorial in 1956, a victory shared with his constant rival, Botvinnik. During this period, there were several triumphs in his city of birth, when he shared first place with Bronstein and Spassky at the inaugural edition of the Moscow Central Chess Club international tournament series (sometimes also referred as an Alekhine Memorial) in 1959, was a joint winner in both 1960 (with Kholmov) and 1961 (with Vasiukov), and won outright in 1963.