Yuri Averbakh, chess’ first centenarian grandmaster, dies at 100

Yuri Averbakh, a Russian chess grandmaster who was among the many world’s greatest gamers for a decade, educated world champions and was the final surviving participant in one of many best competitions in historical past, died Saturday in Moscow. He was 100 — the primary grandmaster to achieve that age.

His dying was introduced on the location of the International Chess Federation, the sport’s governing physique. No trigger was given.

The historic contest through which Averbakh took half was the Candidates Tournament in Zurich in 1953, the ultimate step within the cycle to pick a challenger for the world championship. The subject held many nice gamers of the twentieth century, together with future world champions Vasily Smyslov and Tigran Petrosian and former world champion Max Euwe.

The match was notable not just for the members but in addition for the standard of the video games performed; many chess specialists take into account 4 or 5 of them among the many most memorable in chess historical past, together with one which Averbakh misplaced to Alexander Kotov in spherical 14 after Kotov uncorked a spectacular queen sacrifice.

I used to be fascinated by the persona of Botvinnik. He had his personal unique views on many issues however I discovered that my objections to something he stated often fell on deaf ears. Basically it was a monologue and I used to be speculated to pay attention and admire him. Yuri Averbakh in 2011 #Chess pic.twitter.com/TjXg3N2KFT

— SimplyChessMiniatures (@SimplyChessMini) May 10, 2022

The 1953 Candidates competitors was the one time that Averbakh made it to the ultimate stage of the world championship cycle. He missed enjoying within the 1959 Candidates Tournament by ending in a tie for seventh within the earlier stage of the world championship — the 1958 Interzonal Tournament in Portoroz, Yugoslavia. Only the highest six gamers within the Interzonal certified for the Candidates.

In 1954, Averbakh gained the Soviet Championship. At the time, it was one of many world’s most elite tournaments as a result of lots of the world’s prime gamers have been from the Soviet Union.

Averbakh tied for first within the 1956 championship with Boris Spassky, one other future world champion, and Mark Taimanov, who had additionally performed within the 1953 Candidates Tournament. Taimanov gained a playoff to say the title, with Averbakh ending second.

Stylistically, Averbakh was not a dynamic participant; he typically succeeded by carrying down his opponents. He was significantly achieved within the endgames, the place few items are left on the board, and he wrote a number of books on the topic that’s nonetheless extremely regarded amongst gamers of many ranges.

Yuri Lvovich Averbakh was born on Feb. 8, 1922, in Kaluga, a small city about 100 miles southwest of Moscow. His father labored for the forestry service, and his mom was a instructor. When Averbakh was 3, the household moved to Moscow, the place they shared an house with two different households.

He realized to play chess on the age of seven however was not significantly within the recreation at first; rising to six ft, 2 inches tall, he most well-liked volleyball, hockey, snowboarding and boxing.

Everything modified sooner or later when he was 13: He heard a lecture on chess by Nikolay Grigoriev, a grasp who gained the Moscow Championship 4 instances within the Nineteen Twenties. The lecture, through which Grigoriev confirmed some chess issues he had composed, had an enormous impact on Averbakh’s desirous about the sport.

In his autobiography, “Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: The Personal Memoir of a Soviet Chess Legend” (2011), Averbakh wrote: “The impression of chess as an art connected me forever with the game. I wanted to get into chess, to understand its laws, its secrets.”

And but Averbakh nearly didn’t grow to be an expert chess participant. He studied to be an engineer and repaired tanks and tractors throughout World War II. By the late Forties, he was working in a missile analysis institute and writing a doctoral thesis in engineering. He had additionally continued to progress at chess, changing into a grasp in 1944, however he discovered that the a number of calls for of his research, work and chess have been too nice.

Then his supervisor on the institute gave him an uncommon alternative. He informed Averbakh that he might take two years off to commit himself to chess and that if he didn’t reach changing into an expert, he might return to work on the institute.

Averbakh certified for the 1952 Interzonal match in Saltsjöbaden, Sweden, southeast of Stockholm, and completed fifth, giving him a spot within the 1953 Candidates in Zurich. He was additionally awarded the grandmaster title by the International Chess Federation (then going by the identify the World Chess Federation).

“The question of my return to work at the institute died a death,” he wrote in his memoir.

In 1955, Mikhail Botvinnik, who was then world champion, recruited Averbakh to play coaching video games with him. Over the subsequent two years, the 2 performed 25 video games towards one another — about the identical size as a world championship match — with Botvinnik profitable just one or two extra video games than Averbakh, in line with Averbakh.

Their working relationship ended after Averbakh agreed to play coaching video games with Mikail Tal earlier than the 1959 Candidates Tournament in Yugoslavia. Botvinnik regarded that call as a betrayal, Averbakh wrote. Tal went on to win the Candidates Tournament and defeat Botvinnik the next 12 months.

At the top of 1982, Smyslov, who was then 61, certified for the Candidate’s matches and requested Averbakh, whom he had identified since childhood, to be his coach. Averbakh accepted, and Smyslov gained his quarterfinal and semifinal matches earlier than shedding the ultimate to Garry Kasparov, a future world champion.

As his enjoying profession pale within the early Sixties, Averbakh took on a behind-the-scenes function within the Soviet chess institution. It was a troublesome job, with each appointment and the bureaucratic determination typically topic to political intrigue and second-guessing. Still, although he claimed to be naive about politics, he managed to thrive for a few years in that second profession.

In 1962, he turned editor of the 2 most prestigious Soviet chess magazines, Shakhmatny Bulletin and Shakhmaty v SSSR. He edited them for 37 years, a file for longevity.

Averbakh was appointed president of the Soviet Chess Federation in 1972, a privileged place in Soviet society. With success in chess seen as essential to proving the validity of communism, chess gamers have been regarded very similar to elite athletes and have been even despatched to coach with the Olympic nationwide groups. Averbakh described the scene on the Central Komsomol college in Veshnyako in 1963:

“It was an unforgettable sight. Basketball players were as thin as pencils, bow-legged squat weightlifters, boxers with huge hands like gorillas and cauliflower ears and squashed noses. Of course, there were exceptions, but in general, one got the impression that they were pathological, freak types, which is what had brought them into the big-time sport, and allowed them to achieve better results than normal people.”

He is survived by his daughter (sources differ in figuring out her as Jane or Evgenia). Information on different survivors was not out there.

Though Averbakh was gifted, he stated he knew he lacked the required qualities to grow to be a world champion. In his autobiography, he wrote that nice gamers fall into six classes: killers, fighters, sportsmen, individuals who prefer to play video games, artists and explorers. All of the world champions got here from the primary 4 teams, he stated. He put himself within the sixth class — that of an explorer.

“The main thing was that I never obtained great pleasure from winning,” he wrote. “Clearly, I did not have a champion’s character. On the other hand, I did not like to lose, and the bitterness of defeat was in no way compensated for by the pleasure of winning.”