[blind-chess] Annotated Game #109: Salo Flohr - Mikhail Botvinnik, Moscow 1933
- From: "Roderick Macdonald" <rjmacdonald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Blind-Chess Mailing List" <blind-chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2012 12:08:30 -1000
Annotated Game #109:
Salo Flohr - Mikhail Botvinnik, Moscow 1933
Adapted and Condensed from
Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
Contents:
++1. Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr
++1.A Early life
++1.B Early successes
++1.C World title contender
++1.D Excels in Chess Olympiads
++1.E Match results
++1.F Official challenger, personal crisis
++1.G Soviet citizen, recovers form
++1.H Achievements and legacy
++1.I Notable chess games
++1.J Writings and further reading
++2. Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik
++2.A Early years
++2.B Soviet champion
++2.C World title contender
++2.D World Champion
++2.E Team tournaments
++2.F Late career
++2.G Political controversies
++2.H Assessment
++2.H1 Playing strength and style
++2.H2 Influence on the game
++2.I Other achievements
++2.I1 Electrical engineering
++2.I2 Computer chess
++2.J Writings
++2.J1 Chess
++2.J2 Computers
++2.K Notable chess games
++2.L Tournament results
++2.L1 Match results
++3. Salo Flohr - Mikhail Botvinnik, Moscow 1933
++1. Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr (November 21, 1908 - July 18, 1983) was
a leading Czech, and later Soviet, chess grandmaster of the
mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia
during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury
products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and
eau-de-cologne. Flohr dominated many tournaments of the pre-World
War II years, and by the late 1930s was considered a contender for
the world championship. However, his patient, positional style was
overtaken by the sharper, more tactical methods of the younger
Soviet echelon after World War II. Flohr was also a well-respected
chess author, and an International Arbiter.
++1.A Early life
Flohr had a troubled childhood beset by personal crises. He was
born in a Jewish family in Horodenka in what was then Galicia,
Austria-Hungary (now in Ukraine). He and his brother were orphaned
during World War I after their parents were killed in a massacre,
and they fled to the newly-formed nation of Czechoslovakia.
Flohr settled in Prague, gradually acquiring a reputation as a
skilled chess player by playing for stakes in the city's many
cafes. During 1924, he participated in simultaneous exhibitions by
Richard Reti and Rudolf Spielmann, and he was still giving displays
well into his seventies.
++1.B Early successes
Flohr won the Kautsky Memorial tournaments of 1928 and 1929 which
were held in Prague, and made his international debut at the
Rohitsch-Sauerbrunn (Rogaska Slatina) tournament in Slovenia, where
he finished second to Akiba Rubinstein in the latter's final
success. Flohr had also taken a job as a chess journalist, and one
of his first assignments had been to cover the 1928 Berlin
tournament, where he continued to win money on the side by playing
chess.
++1.C World title contender
Flohr's playing ability peaked in the mid-1930s, when he became one
of the world's strongest players and a leading contender for the
world championship. He became champion of Czechoslovakia in 1933
and 1936 and played in many tournaments throughout Europe,
generally finishing amongst the top three. Notable victories were
at Bad Sliac in 1932, where he shared first place with Milan
Vidmar; Scheveningen in 1933; Bad Liebenwerda in 1934 with 9.5/11;
Barcelona in 1935 where he tied for first with George Koltanowski;
Moscow in 1935 where he came 1st= with future World Champion
Mikhail Botvinnik; Podebrady in 1936 with the score of +10 =6 -1;
and Kemeri in 1937 where he shared the top spot with Vladimir
Petrov and Samuel Reshevsky. During this period, he had several
other notable high finishes, such as Bern 1932 (tied for second
with 11.5/15, after world champion Alexander Alekhine); Zurich 1934
(tied for second with 12/15, again trailing Alekhine); and Parnu
1937 (second behind Paul Felix Schmidt).
Flohr also frequently visited England, regularly playing in the
Hastings tournaments of the 1930s. He was first in 1931-1932, 1932-
1933 and 1933-1934, finished 1st= with Max Euwe and Sir George
Thomas in 1934-1935, and was second behind only Reuben Fine in
1935-1936. He also won the Margate tournament of 1936 ahead of
former world champion Jose Raul Capablanca.
++1.D Excels in Chess Olympiads
His form for his adopted country in the Chess Olympiads was equally
impressive, according to the comprehensive Olympiad site
olimpbase.org. He made his debut at Hamburg 1930 on board one,
scoring a phenomenal 14.5/17 for the silver medal. On home soil at
Prague 1931, again on board one, he scored 11/18, and led
Czechoslovakia to a team bronze medal. At Folkestone 1933, he again
played board one, and made 9/14, helping Czechoslovakia to the team
silver, and earning a bronze medal for himself. At Warsaw 1935, on
board one he scored an unbeaten 13/17 for another individual gold
medal, and Czechoslovakia finished fifth. Then at Stockholm 1937,
once again on board one, he scored 12.5/16 for a third individual
gold medal. In five Olympiads, he won two individual gold medals,
a silver and a bronze. His aggregate was 60/82, for a fantastic 73
per cent against the top players in the world. However, it should
be noted that the Soviet Union did not compete during those years.
++1.E Match results
In addition, Flohr enjoyed a fair amount of success in match play,
and he played matches with two of his main rivals for the title of
challenger to reigning champion Alexander Alekhine. He drew a 16-
game match against Euwe in 1932 (+3 =10 -3) (who was soon to be the
champion, from 1935-37), and drew against Botvinnik in 1933 (+2 =8
-2). Flohr beat Gosta Stoltz by 5.5-2.5 in 1931 and, a year later,
beat Mir Sultan Khan, the 1932 and 1933 British Champion, by
3.5-2.5. Flohr also defeated Johannes van den Bosch at the Hague in
1932 by 6-2. In 1933, he won two matches in Switzerland, first over
Oskar Naegeli by 4-2 at Bern, and then by 4.5-1.5 over Henri Grob
at Arosa.
++1.F Official challenger, personal crisis
Flohr had married in 1935. By 1937, FIDE had nominated him as the
official candidate to play Alekhine for the World Championship.
However, with World War II looming, it proved impossible for Flohr
to raise the stake money in Czechoslovakia, so the plans were
dropped. The next year, Flohr was one of the eight elite players
invited to the great AVRO tournament of November 1938. He finished
last, and this put an end to his chances of a World Championship
match with Alekhine. AVRO may have been the only time in chess
history when the top eight players in the world contested an
important tournament.
While AVRO was an incredibly strong tournament, and Flohr's last-
placed finish was no disgrace, his result may also be explained by
his difficult personal circumstances at the time. The German
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 had left Flohr, as a Polish-
Ukrainian Jew, in grave personal danger. Flohr remained in the
Netherlands in early 1939, playing in several small events. He tied
1st-3rd in Amsterdam KNSB with Max Euwe and Laszlo Szabo at 3.5/5.
He tied 3rd-4th in Amsterdam VARA with 3/5, as Euwe and Salo Landau
won. He won Baarn I with 2.5/3. Then, he and his family fled, first
to Sweden, and then to Moscow with the help of his friend
Botvinnik. While in Sweden, he tied 1st-2nd at Goteborg with Rudolf
Spielmann on 10/11.
++1.G Soviet citizen, recovers form
Flohr was able to recover his form after reaching safety in Moscow.
He won Kemeri 1939 with a wonderful score of 12/15, also captured
the very strong 1939 Leningrad-Moscow tournament with 12/17, tied
for second at Margate 1939 with 6.5/9 behind only Paul Keres, and
then tied for second at Bournemouth 1939 with 8.5/11, behind only
former World Champion Euwe.
Flohr did not play in any official strong Soviet events from
1940-42. He did lose a 1942 match to Vladimir Makogonov in Baku by
2-0. He became a naturalized Soviet citizen in 1942, and developed
his writing career in his new country, contributing articles to a
number of Soviet newspapers and magazines, including Ogonek. As the
Soviet Union first stopped then reversed the Nazi invasion, some
chess activity started up again, and in 1943 Flohr won a small but
strong tournament in Baku. In 1944 he was again victorious in a
Bolshevik Society tournament at Kiev, tied with Alexei Sokolsky. He
withdrew from the 1945 USSR Championship after only three games.
After the War, he was still a contender for a possible World
Championship match, and finished 6th at the 1948 Interzonal in
Saltsjobaden, thereby qualifying to play in the 1950 Candidates
Tournament in Budapest. However, he finished joint last with 7 out
of 18, and never entered the World Championship cycle again,
preferring to concentrate on journalism, and he also developed a
role as a chess organiser. He did play periodically at high levels,
both within the Soviet Union and abroad, with some success, until
the late 1960s. He was awarded the title of International Arbiter
in 1963.
Salo Flohr died in Moscow on July 18, 1983.
++1.H Achievements and legacy
Flohr was one of Czechoslovakia's greatest chessplayers ever, and
proved virtually invincible at the Olympiads of the 1930s. His
tournament record was impressive, with his tactical skill and
excellent endgame technique securing him many famous victories.
FIDE awarded him the International Grandmaster title on its
inaugural list in 1950. He made a number of important contributions
to opening theory: a 'Flohr variation' can be found in no fewer
than six major openings, including the Caro-Kann Defense, the Ruy
Lopez, the English Opening, and the Gruenfeld Defence. The Flohr-
Zaitsev Variation of the Closed Ruy Lopez (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5
a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 0-0 9.h3 Bb7 10.d4
Re8) was taken up in the 1980s with success by World Champion
Anatoly Karpov.
Flohr was primarily a strategist who excelled in the endgame. He
favoured the Closed openings with White, and during the prime of
his career, he was especially deadly with the Queen's Gambit, as
the game selection shows. Flohr almost never opened with 1.e4. He
was one of the main developers of the Caro-Kann, which was an
obscure and poorly-regarded line as late as the 1920s when Flohr
took it up.
The Second World War killed off any chance he had of winning the
world title, and the stress of becoming a refugee for the second
time in his life affected his style of play. He became a much more
cautious player in his post-war games and earned a drawish
reputation, with many short draws which were hardly contested. He
could not keep pace with the new generation of Soviet stars which
emerged after World War II. Players such as Vasily Smyslov, David
Bronstein, Isaac Boleslavsky, Paul Keres, Alexander Kotov, Tigran
Petrosian, Efim Geller, Mark Taimanov, Yuri Averbakh, Boris
Spassky, Mikhail Tal, Viktor Korchnoi, and Leonid Stein dominated
the landscape with their sharper styles and innovative openings.
According to the site chessmetrics.com, which compares historical
ratings, Flohr was among the world's top 20 players from 1930 to
1951, except for the war years 1942-44 when he was largely
inactive; and his ranking peaked at #2 in the world in 1935.
But it is noteworthy that Flohr was never able to defeat Alekhine
head-to-head, losing five games and drawing seven in their 12
encounters. Alekhine had a sharp, tactical style, and he could also
play outstanding positional chess. It is highly unlikely that Flohr
could have won a match against him, had he been given the chance.
++1.I Notable chess games
* Salo Flohr vs Max Euwe, Amsterdam-Karlsbad match 1932,
Queen's Gambit, Exchange Variation (D36), 1-0 Virtually
perfect game by White showing optimal strategy in this
variation.
* Mikhail Botvinnik vs Salo Flohr, Leningrad-Moscow match
1933, Caro-Kann Defence, Panov-Botvinnik Attack (B13), 0-1
Botvinnik adopts his favourite line, but has to concede
defeat.
* Salo Flohr vs Isaac Kashdan, Folkestone Olympiad 1933,
English Opening, Flohr-Mikenas Attack (A18), 1-0 Flohr
adopts one of the lines which will eventually bear his
name, with good success here.
* Salo Flohr vs Paul Keres, Warsaw Olympiad 1935, Queen's
Gambit Declined, Exchange Variation (D37), 1-0 Keres was
the 19-year-old new star making his international debut,
but he is out of his league here.
* Salo Flohr vs J.R. Capablanca, Nottingham 1936, Queen's
Gambit Declined, Tartakower Variation (D59), 1-0 Even the
phenomenal Capablanca, former World Champion and joint
winner of Nottingham, can't defend against Flohr's Queen's
Gambit.
* Salo Flohr vs Emanuel Lasker, Moscow 1936, Reti Opening
(A06), 1-0 Solid positional performance in one of the
fashionable hypermodern variations.
* David Bronstein vs Salo Flohr, USSR Championship, Moscow
1944, Ruy Lopez, Open Variation (C82), 0-1 The 20-year-old
Bronstein was making his debut at the top Soviet level, but
learns a lesson here.
* Salo Flohr vs Tigran Petrosian, USSR Championship, Moscow
1949, Old Indian Defence (A54), 1-0 The 20-year-old
Petrosian was making his debut at the top Soviet level, and
learns a positional lesson.
* Salo Flohr vs Efim Geller, USSR Championship, Moscow 1950,
Reti Opening (A05), 1-0 Another young Master learns that
the veteran Flohr still packs a punch.
* Leonid Stein vs Salo Flohr, Ukrainian Championship, Kiev
1957, Caro-Kann Defence, Flohr-Smyslov Modern Variation
(B17), 0-1 Another smooth positional massage from the
Master of the 'Roach'.
* Salo Flohr vs Bent Larsen, Noordwijk 1965, Sicilian
Defence, Accelerated Dragon Variation (B39), 1-0 Flohr
takes off one of the Candidates of that time in his last
great victory.
++1.J Writings and further reading
* 12th Chess Tournament of Nations (Moscow 1956 Olympiad), by
Salomon Flohr, Moscow, Fiskultura i Sport, 1957 (Russian).
* Salo Flohr's Best Games of Chess, by Salomon Flohr
(translated from the Russian by Gregory S. Donges),
Davenport, Iowa, Thinker's Press, 1985, ISBN 0-938650-34-3.
* Grandmaster Flohr, by Viktor D. Baturinsky (Hg), Moscow,
Fiskultura i Sport, 1985 (Russian).
* Salo Flohr und das Schachleben in der Tschechoslawakei, by
Helmut Wieteck, Hamburg, Neu-Jung Verlag, 2005, ISBN
3-933648-26-2 (German).
++2. Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. (August 17 (August 4?) 1911 -
May 5, 1995) was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and
three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer
and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few
famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career
while playing top-class competitive chess. He also developed a
chess-playing algorithm that tried to "think" like a top human
player, but this approach has been superseded by a brute-force
search strategy that exploits the rapid increase in the calculation
speed of modern computers.
Botvinnik was the first world-class player to develop within the
Soviet Union (Alekhine was a top player before the Russian
Revolution), putting him under political pressure but also giving
him considerable influence within Soviet chess. From time to time
he was accused of using that influence to his own advantage, but
the evidence is unclear and some suggest he resisted attempts by
Soviet officials to intimidate some of his rivals.
Botvinnik also played a major role in the organization of chess,
making a significant contribution to the design of the World Chess
Championship system after World War II and becoming a leading
member of the coaching system that enabled the Soviet Union to
dominate top-class chess during that time. His famous pupils
include World Champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir
Kramnik.
Playing top class chess for decades, being an eminent chess author,
one of the pioneers of computer chess, and a great chess teacher in
his late years, Botvinnik is widely regarded as the most
influential chess contributor in the 20th century.
++2.A Early years
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik was born on August 17, 1911, in what
was then Kuokkala in the Russian-controlled but autonomous Grand
Duchy of Finland, but is now the district of Repino in Saint
Petersburg. Although his parents were Jewish, his father was a
dental technician and his mother a dentist, which allowed the
family to live outside the Pale of Settlement to which most Jews in
the Russian Empire were restricted at the time. As a result,
Mikhail Botvinnik grew up in Saint Petersburg's Nevsky Prospekt.
His father forbade the speaking of Yiddish at home, and Mikhail and
his older brother Issy attended Soviet schools. Mikhail Botvinnik
later said, "I am a Jew by blood, Russian by culture, Soviet by
upbringing."
In 1920, his mother became ill and his father left the family, but
maintained contact with the children, even after his second
marriage, to a Russian woman. At about the same time, Mikhail
started reading newspapers, and became a committed Communist.
In autumn 1923, at the age of twelve, Mikhail Botvinnik was taught
chess by a school friend of his older brother, using a home-made
set, and instantly fell in love with the game. He finished in mid-
table in the school championship, sought advice from another of his
brother's friends, and concluded that for him it was better to
think out "concrete concepts" and then derive general principles
from these - and went on to beat his brother's friend quite easily.
In winter 1924, Botvinnik won his school's championship, and
exaggerated his age by three years in order to become a member of
the Petrograd Chess Assembly - to which the Assembly's President
turned a blind eye. Botvinnik won his first two tournaments
organized by the Assembly. Shortly afterwards, Nikolai Krylenko, a
chess fanatic and leading member of the Soviet legal system who
later organized Joseph Stalin's show trials, began building a huge
nation-wide chess organization, and the Assembly was replaced by a
club in the city's Palace of Labor.
To test the strength of Soviet chess masters, Krylenko organized
the Moscow 1925 chess tournament. On a rest day during the event,
world champion José Raúl Capablanca gave a simultaneous exhibition
in Leningrad. Botvinnik was selected as one of his opponents, and
won their game. In 1926, he reached the final stage of the
Leningrad championship. Later that year, he was selected for
Leningrad's team in a match against Stockholm, held in Sweden, and
scored +1 =1 against the future grandmaster Gösta Stoltz. On his
return, he entertained his schoolmates with a vivid account of the
rough sea journey back to Russia. Botvinnik was commissioned to
annotate two games from the match, and the fact that his analyses
were to be published made him aware of the need for objectivity. In
December 1926, he became a candidate member of his school's
Komsomol branch. Around this time his mother became concerned about
his poor physique, and as a result he started a program of daily
exercise, which he maintained for most of his life.
Botvinnik in 1927When Botvinnik finished the school curriculum, he
was below the minimum age for the entrance examinations for higher
education. While waiting, he qualified for his first USSR
Championship final stage in 1927 as the youngest player ever at
that time, tied for fifth place and won the title of National
Master. He wanted to study Electrical Technology at the Leningrad
Polytechnical Institute and passed the entrance examination;
however, there was a persistent excess of applications for this
course and the Prolestud, which controlled admissions, had a policy
of admitting only children of engineers and industrial workers.
After an appeal by a local chess official, he was admitted in 1928
to Leningrad University's Mathematics Department. In January 1929,
Botvinnik played for Leningrad in the student team chess
championship against Moscow. Leningrad won and the team manager,
who was also Deputy Chairman of the Prolestud, secured Botvinnik a
transfer to the Polytechnic's Electromechanical Department, where
he was one of only four students who entered straight from school.
As a result, he had to do a whole year's work in five months, and
failed one of the examinations. Early in the same year he placed
joint third in the semi-final stage of the USSR Championship, and
thus failed to reach the final stage.
His early progress was fairly rapid, mostly under the training of
Soviet Master and coach Abram Model, in Leningrad; Model taught
Botvinnik the Winawer Variation of the French Defence, then
regarded as inferior for Black, but which Model and Botvinnik
analyzed more deeply, and then played with great success.
He won the Leningrad Masters' tournament in 1930 with 6½/8,
following this up the next year by winning the Championship of
Leningrad by 2½ points over former Soviet champion Peter
Romanovsky.
His wife was a Russian named Gayane (Ganna) Davidovna, the daughter
of his algebra and geometry teacher. She was a student at the
Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in Leningrad and later, a
ballerina in the Bolshoi Theatre. They had one daughter named Olga,
born in 1941.
++2.B Soviet champion
In 1931, at the age of 20, Botvinnik won his first Soviet
Championship in Moscow, scoring 13½ out of 17. He commented that
the field was not very strong, as some of the pre-Revolution
masters were absent. In late summer 1931, he graduated with a
degree in Electrical Engineering, after completing a practical
assignment on temporary transmission lines at the Dnieper
Hydroelectric Station. He stayed on at the Leningrad Polytechnical
Institute to study for a Candidate's degree.
In 1933, he repeated his Soviet Championship win, in his home city
of Leningrad, with 14/19, describing the results as evidence that
Krylenko's plan to develop a new generation of Soviet masters had
borne fruit. He and other young masters successfully requested the
support of a senior Leningrad Communist Party official in arranging
contests involving both Soviet and foreign players, as there had
been none since the Moscow 1925 chess tournament. Soon afterwards,
Botvinnik was informed that Alexander Ilyin-Genevsky, one of the
older masters and a member of the Soviet embassy in Prague, had
arranged a match between Salo Flohr and himself, with his opponent
then regarded as one of the most credible contenders for Alexander
Alekhine's World Chess Championship title. The highest-level chess
officials in the Soviet Union opposed this on the grounds that
Botvinnik stood little chance against such a strong opponent, which
caused Krylenko to insist on the match, saying that "We have to
know our real strength."
Botvinnik used what he regarded as the first version of his method
of preparing for a contest, but fell two games behind by the end of
the first six, played in Moscow. However, aided by his old friend
Ragozin and coach Abram Model, he leveled the score in Leningrad
and the match was drawn. When describing the post-match party,
Botvinnik wrote that at the time he danced the foxtrot and
Charleston to a professional standard.
In his first tournament outside the USSR, the Hastings 1934-1935,
Botvinnik achieved only a tie for 5th-6th places, with 5/9. He
wrote that, in London after the tournament, Emanuel Lasker said his
arrival only two hours before the first round began was a serious
mistake and that he should have allowed ten days for
acclimatization. Botvinnik wrote that he did not make this mistake
again.
Botvinnik placed first equal with Flohr, ½ point ahead of Lasker
and one point ahead of José Raúl Capablanca, in Moscow's second
International Tournament, held in 1935. After consulting Capablanca
and Lasker, Krylenko proposed to award Botvinnik the title
grandmaster, but Botvinnik objected that "titles were not the
point." However, he accepted a free car and a 67% increase in his
postgraduate study grant, both provided by the People's
Commissariat of Heavy Industry.
Botvinnik vs Lasker in 1936He later reported to Krylenko that the
1935 tournament made it difficult to judge the strength of the top
Soviet players, as it included a mixture of top-class and weaker
players. Botvinnik advocated a double round-robin event featuring
the top five Soviet players and the five strongest non-Soviet
players available. Despite politicking over the Soviet choices,
both Krylenko and the Central Committee of the Komsomol quickly
authorised the tournament. This was played in Moscow in June
1936,and Botvinnik finished second, one point behind Capablanca and
2 ahead of Flohr. However, he took consolation from the fact the
Soviet Union's best had held their own against top-class
competition.
In early winter, 1936, Botvinnik was invited to play in a
tournament at Nottingham, England. Krylenko authorized his
participation and, to help Botvinnik play at his best, allowed
Botvinnik's wife to accompany him - a privilege rarely extended to
chess players at any time in Soviet history. Taking Lasker's
advice, Botvinnik arrived ten days before play started. Although
his Soviet rivals forecast disaster for him, he scored an
undefeated shared first place (+6 =8) with Capablanca, ½ point
ahead of current World Champion Max Euwe and rising American stars
Reuben Fine and Samuel Reshevsky, and 1 point ahead of ex-champion
Alexander Alekhine. This was the first tournament victory by a
Soviet master outside his own country. When the result reached
Russia, Krylenko drafted a letter to be sent in Botvinnik's name to
Stalin. On returning to Russia Botvinnik discovered he had been
awarded the "Mark of Honour".
Three weeks later, he began work on his dissertation for the
Candidate's degree, obtaining this in June 1937, after his
supervisor described the dissertation as "short and good", and the
first work in its field. As a result of his efforts, he missed the
1937 Soviet championship, won by Grigory Levenfish, who was then
nearly fifty. Later in 1937, Botvinnik drew a match of thirteen
games against Grigory Levenfish. Accounts differ about how the
match was arranged: Levenfish later wrote that Botvinnik challenged
him; while Botvinnik wrote that Krylenko, angered by Botvinnik's
absence from the tournament, ordered the match.
Botvinnik won further Soviet Championship titles in 1939, 1944,
1945, and 1952, bringing his total to six - a record he shares with
Mikhail Tal. In 1945 he dominated the tournament, scoring 15/17;
however in 1952 he tied with Mark Taimanov and won the play-off
match.
++2.C World title contender
In 1938, the world's top eight players met in the Netherlands to
compete in the AVRO tournament, whose winner was supposed to get a
title match with the World Champion, Alexander Alekhine. Botvinnik
placed third, behind Paul Keres and Reuben Fine. According to
Botvinnik, Alekhine was most interested in playing an opponent who
could raise the funds. After consulting the nearest available
Soviet officials, Botvinnik discreetly challenged Alekhine, who
promptly accepted, subject to conditions that would enable him to
acclimatize in Russia and get some high-quality competitive
practice a few months before the match. In Botvinnik's opinion,
Alekhine was partly motivated by the desire for a reconciliation
with the Soviet authorities, so that he could again visit his
homeland. The match, including funding, was authorised at the
highest Soviet political level in January 1939; however, a letter
of confirmation was only sent two months later - in Botvinnik's
opinion, because of opposition by his Soviet rivals, especially
those who had become prominent before the Russian Revolution - and
the outbreak of World War II prevented a World Championship match.
In spring 1939, Botvinnik won the USSR Championship, and his book
on the tournament described the approach to preparation which he
had been developing since 1933. One striking feature of this was
emphasis on opening preparation in order to gain a permanent
positional advantage in the middle game, rather than seeking
immediate tactical surprises that could only be used once.
Botvinnik took an early lead in the 1940 USSR Championship, but
faded badly in the later stages, eventually sharing fifth place. He
attributed this to the unaccustomed difficulty of concentrating in
a party-like atmosphere filled with noise and tobacco smoke.
Botvinnik wrote to a friendly official, commenting that the
champion was to be the winner of a match between Igor Bondarevsky
and Andor Lilienthal, who had tied for first place, but had no
achievements in international competition. The official's efforts
led to a tournament for the title of "Absolute Champion of the
USSR", whose official aim was to identify a Soviet challenger for
Alekhine's title. The contestants were the top six finishers in the
Soviet Championship - Bondarevsky, Lilienthal, Paul Keres (who had
recently become a Soviet citizen), future World Champion Vasily
Smyslov, Isaac Boleslavsky and Botvinnik - who were to play a
quadruple round robin. Botvinnik's preparation with his second,
Viacheslav Ragozin, included training matches in noisy, smoky rooms
and he slept in the playing room, without opening the window. He
won the tournament, 2½ points ahead of Keres and three ahead of
Smyslov; moreover, with plus scores in the "mini-matches" against
all his rivals.
In June 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Botvinnik's
wife Gayane, a ballerina, told him that her colleagues at the Kirov
Opera and Ballet Theatre were being evacuated to the city of
Perm,then known as Molotov in honour of Vyacheslav Molotov. The
family found an apartment there, and Botvinnik obtained a job with
the local electricity supply organization at the lowest pay rate
and on condition that he did no research, as he had only a
Candidate's degree. Botvinnik's only child, a daughter named Olya,
was born in Perm in April 1942.
In the evenings, Botvinnik wrote a book in which he annotated all
the games of the "Absolute Championship of the USSR", in order to
maintain his analytic skills in readiness for a match with
Alekhine. His work included wood-cutting for fuel, which left him
with insufficient energy for chess analysis. Botvinnik obtained
from Molotov an order that he should be given three days off normal
work in order to study chess.
In 1943, after a two-year lay-off from competitive chess, Botvinnik
won a tournament in Sverdlovsk, scoring 1½ out of 2 against each of
his competitors - who included Smyslov, Vladimir Makogonov,
Boleslavsky, and Ragozin. Chessbase regards this as one of the
fifty strongest tournaments between 1851 and 1986.
Shortly afterwards, Botvinnik was urged to return to Moscow by the
People's Commissar for Power Stations, an admirer and subsequent
good friend. On his return, Botvinnik suggested a match with Samuel
Reshevsky in order to strengthen his claim for a title match with
Alekhine, but this received no political support. In December 1943,
he won the Moscow Championship, ahead of Smyslov. At the same time,
opposition to his plan for a match with Alekhine re-surfaced, on
the grounds that Alekhine was a political enemy and the only proper
course was to demand that he be stripped of the title. The dispute
ended in Botvinnik's favor, and in the dismissal of a senior chess
official, one of those to have opposed Botvinnik's plan, who was
also a KGB colonel.
After Botvinnik won the 1944 and 1945 Soviet championships, most
top Soviet players supported his desire for a World Championship
match with Alekhine. However, the allegations that Alekhine had
written anti-Semitic articles while in Nazi-occupied France made it
difficult to host the match in the USSR. Botvinnik opened
negotiations with the British Chess Federation to host the match in
England, but these were cut short by Alekhine's death in 1946.
When the Second World War ended, Botvinnik won the first high-level
post-war tournament, at Groningen in 1946, with 14½ points from
nineteen games, ½ point ahead of former World Champion Max Euwe and
two ahead of Smyslov. He and Euwe both struggled in the last few
rounds, and Botvinnik had a narrow escape against Euwe, who he
acknowledged had always been a difficult opponent for him. This was
Botvinnik's first outright victory in a tournament outside the
Soviet Union.
Botvinnik also won the very strong Mikhail Chigorin Memorial
tournament held at Moscow 1947.
++2.D World Champion
Botvinnik strongly influenced the design of the system which would
be used for World Championship competition from 1948 to 1963.
Viktor Baturinsky wrote "Now came Botvinnik's turn to defend his
title in accordance with the new qualifying system which he himself
had outlined in 1946" (this statement referred to Botvinnik's 1951
title defense).
On the basis of his strong results during and just after World War
II, Botvinnik was one of five players to contest the 1948 World
Chess Championship, which was held at The Hague and Moscow. He won
the 1948 tournament convincingly, with a score of 14/20, three
points clear, becoming the sixth World Champion. While he was on
vacation in Riga after the tournament, an eleven-year old boy
called Mikhail Tal paid a visit, hoping to play a game against the
new champion. Tal was met by Botvinnik's wife, who said the
champion was asleep, and that she had made him take a rest from
chess.
Botvinnik then held the title, with two brief interruptions, for
the next fifteen years, during which he played seven world
championship matches. In 1951, he drew with David Bronstein over 24
games in Moscow, +5 -5 =14, keeping the world title, but it was a
struggle for Botvinnik, who won the second-last game and drew the
last in order to tie the match. In 1954, he drew with Vasily
Smyslov over 24 games at Moscow, +7 -7 =10, again retaining the
title. In 1957, he lost to Smyslov by 9-12½ in Moscow, but the
rules then in force allowed him a rematch without having to go
through the Candidates' Tournament, and in 1958 he won the rematch
in Moscow; Smyslov said his health was poor during the return
match. In 1960, Botvinnik was convincingly beaten 8½-12½ at Moscow
by Tal, now 23 years old, but again exercised his right to a
rematch in 1961, and won by 13-8 in Moscow. Commentators agreed
that Tal's play was weaker in the rematch, probably due to his
health, but also that Botvinnik's play was better than in the 1960
match, largely due to thorough preparation. Botvinnik changed his
style in the rematch, avoiding the tactical complications in which
Tal excelled and aiming for closed positions and endgames, where
Tal's technique was not outstanding. Finally, in 1963, he lost the
title to Tigran Petrosian, by 9-12 in Moscow. FIDE had by then
altered the rules, and he was not allowed a rematch. The rematch
rule had been nicknamed the "Botvinnik rule", because he twice
benefited from it.
Though ranking as formal World Champion, Botvinnik had a relatively
poor playing record in the early 1950s: he played no formal
competitive games after winning the 1948 match tournament until he
defended his title, then struggled to draw his 1951 championship
match with Bronstein, placed only fifth in the 1951 Soviet
Championship, and tied for third in the 1952 Géza Maróczy Memorial
tournament in Budapest; and he had also performed poorly in Soviet
training contests. Botvinnik did not play in the Soviet team that
won the 1952 Chess Olympiad in Helsinki: the players voted for the
line-up and placed Botvinnik on second board, with Keres on top
board; Botvinnik protested and refused to play. Keres' playing
record from 1950 to early 1952 had been outstanding.
Botvinnik won the 1952 Soviet Championship (joint first with Mark
Taimanov in the tournament, won the play-off match). He included
several wins from that tournament over the 1952 Soviet team members
in his book Botvinnik's Best Games 1947-1970, writing "these games
had a definite significance for me". In 1956, he tied for first
place with Smyslov in the 1956 Alexander Alekhine Memorial in
Moscow, despite a last-round loss to Keres.
++2.E Team tournaments
Botvinnik was selected for the Soviet Olympiad team from 1954 to
1964 inclusively, and helped his team to gold medal finishes each
of those six times. At Amsterdam 1954 he was on board one and won
the gold medal with 8?/11. Then at home for Moscow 1956, he was
again board one, and scored 9?/13 for the bronze medal. For Munich
1958, he scored 9/12 for the silver medal on board one. At Leipzig
1960, he played board two behind Mikhail Tal, having lost his title
to Tal earlier that year; But he won the board two gold medal with
10?/13. He was back on board one for Varna 1962, scored 8/12, but
failed to win a medal for the only time at an Olympiad. His final
Olympiad was Tel Aviv 1964, where he won the bronze with 9/12,
playing board 2 as he had lost his title to Petrosian. Overall, in
six Olympiads, he scored 54½/73 for an outstanding 74.6 percent.
Botvinnik also played twice for the USSR in the European Team
Championship. At Oberhausen 1961, he scored 6/9 for the gold medal
on board one. But at Hamburg 1965, he struggled on board two with
only 3½/8. Both times the Soviet Union won the team gold medals.
Botvinnik played one of the final events of his career at the
Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World match in Belgrade 1970, scoring
2½/4 against Milan Matulovic, as the USSR narrowly triumphed.
++2.F Late career
After losing the world title for the final time, to Tigran
Petrosian in Moscow in 1963, Botvinnik withdrew from the following
World Championship cycle after FIDE declined, at its annual
congress in 1965, to grant a losing champion the automatic right to
a rematch. He remained involved with competitive chess, appearing
in several highly-rated tournaments and continuing to produce
memorable games.
He retired from competitive play in 1970, aged 59, preferring
instead to occupy himself with the development of computer chess
programs and to assist with the training of younger Soviet players,
earning him the nickname of "Patriarch of the Soviet Chess School"
(see below).
Botvinnik's autobiography, K Dostizheniyu Tseli, was published in
Russian in 1978, and in English translation as Achieving the Aim
(ISBN 0-08-024120-4) in 1981. A staunch Communist, he was
noticeably shaken by the collapse of the Soviet Union and lost some
of his standing in Russian chess during the Boris Yeltsin era.
In the 1980s Botvinnik proposed a computer program to manage the
Soviet economy, however his proposals did not receive significant
attention from the Soviet government.
During the last few years of his life he personally financed his
economic computer project that he hoped would be used to manage the
Russian economy.He kept actively working on the program until his
death and financing the work from the money he made for the
lectures and seminars he attended, despite prominent health
problems.
Botvinnik died of pancreatic cancer in 1995. According to his
daughter, Botvinnik remained active until the last few months of
his life, and continued to go to work until March, 1995 despite
blindness in one of his eyes (and extremely poor vision in the
other).
++2.G Political controversies
The Soviet Union regarded chess as a symbol of Communist
superiority, and hence the Soviet chess world was extremely
politicized. As Botvinnik was the first world-class player produced
by the Soviet Union, everything he said or did (or did not say or
do) had political repercussions, and there were rumors that Soviet
opponents were given hints that they should not beat him.
David Bronstein wrote that Boris Verlinsky had won the 1929 Soviet
Championship and was granted the first Soviet Grandmaster title for
this achievement, yet he was later stripped of it, when it was
thought more politically correct to make Botvinnik the first
official Soviet GM (as distinct from the-then nonexistent FIDE
grandmaster title).
Botvinnik wrote that before the last round of the 1935 Moscow
tournament Soviet Commissar of Justice Nikolai Krylenko, who was
also in charge of Soviet chess, proposed that Ilya Rabinovich
should deliberately lose to Botvinnik, to ensure that Botvinnik
took first place. Botvinnik refused, saying "... then I will myself
put a piece en prise and resign". The game was drawn, and Botvinnik
shared first place with Salo Flohr.
Botvinnik sent an effusive telegram of thanks to Joseph Stalin
after his victory at the great tournament in Nottingham in 1936.
Many years later he said that it had been written in Moscow and
that KGB agents told him to sign it.
Botvinnik played relatively poorly in the very strong 1940 Soviet
Championship, finishing in a tie for fifth/sixth places, with
11½/19, two full points behind Igor Bondarevsky and Andor
Lilienthal. With World War II under way by this time, and the
strong possibility of little or no chess for some time in the
future, Botvinnik seems to have prevailed upon the Soviet chess
leadership to hold another tournament "in order to clarify the
situation". This wound up being the 1941 Absolute Championship of
the USSR, which featured the top six finishers from the 1940 event,
playing each other four times. After a personal appeal to the
defence minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, Botvinnik was exempted from
war work for three days a week in order to concentrate on chess
preparations. He won this tournament convincingly, and thus
reclaimed his position as the USSR's top player. Bronstein claimed
that at the end of the 1946 Groningen tournament, a few months
after the death of reigning world champion Alexander Alekhine,
Botvinnik personally invited Samuel Reshevsky, Reuben Fine, Max
Euwe, Vasily Smyslov, and Paul Keres to join him in a tournament to
decide the new world champion, but other evidence suggests that
FIDE (the "governing body" of chess), had already proposed a World
Championship tournament before the Groningen tournament began, and
at this stage the Soviet Union was not a member and therefore took
no part in framing that proposal.
Since Keres lost his first four games against Botvinnik in the 1948
World Championship tournament, winning only in the final cycle
after the outcome of the tournament had been decided, suspicions
have sometimes been raised that Keres was forced to "throw" games
to allow Botvinnik to win the Championship. Chess historian Taylor
Kingston investigated all the available evidence and arguments, and
concluded that: Soviet chess officials gave Keres strong hints that
he should not hinder Botvinnik's attempt to win the World
Championship; Botvinnik only discovered this about half-way through
the tournament and protested so strongly that he angered Soviet
officials; Keres probably did not deliberately lose games to
Botvinnik or anyone else in the tournament.
Bronstein insinuated that Soviet officials pressured him to lose in
the 1951 world championship match so that Botvinnik would keep the
title, but comments by Botvinnik's second, Salo Flohr, and
Botvinnik's own annotations to the critical 23rd game indicate that
Botvinnik knew of no such plot.
In 1956, FIDE changed the world championship rules so that a
defeated champion would have the right to a return match. Yuri
Averbakh alleged that this was done at the urging of the two Soviet
representatives in FIDE, who were personal friends of Botvinnik.
Averbakh also claims that Botvinnik's friends were behind FIDE's
decision in 1956 to limit the number of players from the same
country that could compete in the Candidates Tournament, and that
this was to Botvinnik's advantage as it reduced the number of
Soviet players he might have to meet in the title match.
Botvinnik asked to be allowed to play in the 1956 Candidates
Tournament, as he wanted to use the event as part of his warm-up
for the next year's title match, but his request was refused.
Mikhail Tal's chronic kidney problems contributed to his defeat in
his 1961 return match with Botvinnik, and his doctors in Riga
advised that he should postpone the match for health reasons.
Averbakh claimed that Botvinnik would agree to a postponement only
if Tal was certified unfit by Moscow doctors, and that Tal then
decided to play.
While there is no doubt that Botvinnik sincerely believed in
Communism, he by no means submissively followed the party line. In
1954, he wrote an article about inciting socialist revolution in
western countries, aiming to spread Communism without a third world
war. And in 1960 Botvinnik wrote a letter to the Soviet Government
proposing economic reforms that were contrary to party policy.
In 1976 Soviet grandmasters were asked to sign a letter condemning
Viktor Korchnoi as a "traitor" after Korchnoi defected. Botvinnik
evaded this "request" by saying that he wanted to write his own
letter denouncing Korchnoi. By this time, however, his importance
had waned and officials would not give him this "privilege", so
Botvinnik's name did not appear on the group letter - an outcome
Botvinnik may have foreseen. Bronstein and Boris Spassky openly
refused to sign the letter.
++2.H Assessment
++2.H1 Playing strength and style
For more information see Comparing top chess players throughout
history Reuben Fine observed that Botvinnik was at or near the top
of the chess world for thirty years - from 1933, when he drew a
match against Flohr, to 1963, when he lost the world championship
for the final time, to Petrosian - "a feat equaled historically
only by Emanuel Lasker and Steinitz". The statistical rating system
used in Raymond Keene and Nathan Divinsky's book Warriors of the
Mind concludes that Botvinnik was the fourth strongest player of
all time: behind Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and Bobby Fischer
but ahead of José Raúl Capablanca, Lasker, Viktor Korchnoi, Boris
Spassky, Vasily Smyslov and Tigran Petrosian. The Chessmetrics
system is sensitive to the length of the periods being compared,
but places Botvinnik third in a comparison of players' best
individual years (1946 for Botvinnik) and sixth in a comparison of
fifteen-year periods (1935-1949 in Botvinnik's case). In 2005
Chessmetrics' creator Jeff Sonas wrote an article which examined
various ways of comparing the strength of "world number one"
players, some not based on Chessmetrics; and Botvinnik generally
emerged as one of the top six (the greatest exceptions were in
criteria related to tournament results). FIDE did not adopt the Elo
rating system until 1970, by which time Botvinnik's strength had
been declining for several years. According to unofficial
calculations by Árpád Elo, Botvinnik was the highest-rated player
from 1937 to 1954, peaking about 2730 in 1946.
This may seem surprising in the light of Botvinnik's results in the
1950s and early 1960s, when he failed to win a world championship
match outright (as reigning champion) and his tournament results
were patchy. But after the FIDE world championship cycle was
established in 1948, reigning champions had to play the strongest
contender every three years, and successful title defenses became
less common than in the pre-World War II years, when the
titleholder could select his challenger. Despite this, Botvinnik
held the world title for a longer period than any of his successors
except Garry Kasparov. Botvinnik also became world champion at the
relatively late age of 37, because World War II brought
international competition to a virtual halt for six years; and he
was 52 years old when he finally lost his title (only Wilhelm
Steinitz and Emanuel Lasker were older when they were defeated).
Botvinnik's best years were from 1935 to 1946; during that period
he dominated Soviet chess; and the USSR's 15-4½ win in the 1945
radio match against the USA proved that the USSR's top players were
considerably better than the USA's (who had dominated international
team competitions in the 1930s).
Botvinnik generally sought tense positions with chances for both
sides; hence his results were often better with the Black pieces as
he could avoid lines that were likely to produce draws. He had a
strong grasp of long-term strategy, and was often willing to accept
weaknesses that his opponent could not exploit in exchange for some
advantage that Botvinnik could exploit. He confessed that he was
relatively weak in tactical calculation, yet many of his games
feature sacrifices - often long-term positional sacrifices whose
purpose was not to force a quick win, but to improve his position
and undermine his opponent's. Botvinnik was also capable of all-out
sacrificial attacks when he thought the position justified it.
Botvinnik saw himself as a "universal player" (all-rounder), in
contrast to all-out tactical calculators like Mikhail Tal or purely
positional players like Tigran Petrosian. Reuben Fine considered
Botvinnik's collection of best games one of the three most
beautiful up to the mid-1950s (the other two were Alexander
Alekhine's and Akiba Rubinstein's).
Kasparov quotes Tigran Petrosian as saying, "There was a very
unpleasant feeling of inevitability. Once in a conversation with
Keres I mentioned this and even compared Botvinnik with a
bulldozer, which sweeps away everything in its path. Keres smiled
and said: 'But can you imagine what it was like to play him when he
was young?'"
++2.H2 Influence on the game
Botvinnik's example and teaching established the modern approach to
preparing for competitive chess: regular but moderate physical
exercise; analysing very thoroughly a relatively narrow repertoire
of openings; annotating one's own games, those of past great
players and those of competitors; publishing one's annotations so
that others can point out any errors; studying strong opponents to
discover their strengths and weaknesses; ruthless objectivity about
one's own strengths and weaknesses. Botvinnik also played many
short training matches against strong grandmasters including Salo
Flohr, Yuri Averbakh, Viacheslav Ragozin, and Semion Furman - in
noisy or smoky rooms if he thought he would have to face such
conditions in actual competition. Vladimir Kramnik said,
"Botvinnik's chess career was the way of a genius, although he was
not a genius", meaning that Botvinnik was brilliant at making the
best use of his talents.
Although Botvinnik did not use a wide range of openings, he made
major contributions to those he did use, for example: the Botvinnik
variation of the Semi-Slav Defense in the Queen's Gambit Declined,
the Kasparov/Botvinnik system in the Exchange Variation of the
Queen's Gambit Declined, the Caro-Kann Defence (both the Panov-
Botvinnik Attack for White and various approaches for Black), the
Winawer Variation of the French Defence, the Botvinnik System in
the English Opening. In his openings research Botvinnik did not aim
to produce tactical tricks that would only be effective once but
rather systems in which he aimed to understand typical positions
and their possibilities better than his rivals. His advice to his
pupils included "My theory of the openings fitted into one
notebook" and "You don't have to know that which everyone knows,
but it is important to know that which not everyone knows." In fact
he used different notebooks in different periods, and copied a few
analyses from one notebook to the next. The "Soviet School of
Chess" that dominated competition from 1945 to about 2000 followed
Botvinnik's approach to preparation and to openings research; and,
although Soviet players had their own preferred styles of play,
they adopted his combative approach and willingness to ignore
"classical" principles if doing so offered credible prospects of a
lasting advantage.
In 1963 Botvinnik founded his own school within the Soviet coaching
system, and its graduates include world champions Anatoly Karpov,
Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, and other top-class players
such as Alexei Shirov, Vladimir Akopian and Jaan Ehlvest. Botvinnik
was not an infallible spotter of chess talent: although he said of
the 11-year old Kasparov, "The future of chess lies in the hands of
this young man", he said on first seeing Karpov, "The boy doesn't
have a clue about chess, and there's no future at all for him in
this profession." But Karpov recounts fondly his youthful memories
of the Botvinnik school and credits Botvinnik's training,
especially the homework he assigned, with a marked improvement in
his own play. Kasparov presents Botvinnik almost as a kind of
father figure, going some way towards balancing the common public
perception of Botvinnik as dour and aloof; and Kasparov inherited
Botvinnik's emphasis on preparation, research and innovation.
Botvinnik was still playing a major teaching role in his late 70s,
when Kramnik entered the school, and made a favorable impression on
his pupil.
++2.I Other achievements
++2.I1 Electrical engineer
ingEngineering was as much of a passion for Botvinnik as chess - at
Nottingham in 1936, where he had his first major tournament win
outside the USSR, he said "I wish I could do what he's done in
electrical engineering" (referring to Milan Vidmar, another
grandmaster). He was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour for
his work on power stations in the Urals during World War II (while
he was also establishing himself as the world's strongest chess
player). He earned his doctorate in electrical engineering in
1951.] In 1956, he joined the Research Institute for Electrical
Energy as a senior research scientist.
++2.I2 Computer chess
In the 1950s Botvinnik became interested in computers, at first
mainly for playing chess but he later also co-authored reports on
the possible use of artificial intelligence in managing the Soviet
economy. Botvinnik's research on chess-playing programs
concentrated on "selective searches", which used general chess
principles to decide which moves were worth considering. This was
the only feasible approach for the primitive computers available in
the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, which were only capable of
searching three or four half-moves deep (i.e. A's move, B's move,
A's move, B's move) if they tried to examine every variation.
Botvinnik eventually developed an algorithm that was reasonably
good at finding the right move in difficult positions, but it often
missed the right move in simple positions, e.g. where it was
possible to checkmate in two moves. This "selective" approach
turned out to be a dead end, as computers were powerful enough by
the mid-1970s to perform a brute-force search (checking all
possible moves) several moves deep and today's vastly more powerful
computers do this well enough to compete against human world
champions. However, his PIONEER program contained a generalized
method of decision-making that, with a few adjustments, enabled it
to plan maintenance of power stations all over the USSR. On
September 7, 1991 Botvinnik was awarded an honorary degree in
mathematics of the University of Ferrara (Italy) for his work on
computer chess.
++2.J Writings
++2.J1 Chess
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1960). One hundred selected games. Courier
Dover. ISBN 0486206203.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1972). Cafferty, B.. ed. Botvinnik's best
games, 1947-1970. Batsford. ISBN 0713403578.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1973). Garry, S.. ed. Soviet chess
championship, 1941: Complete text of games with detailed
notes & an introduction. Dover Publications. ISBN
0486221849.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1973). World Championship: The Return
Match Botvinnik vs. Smyslov 1958. Chess Digest Magazine.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1973). Alekhine vs. Euwe return match
1937. Chess Digest.
* Matanovic, A.; Kazic, B., Yudovich, M., and Botvinnik, M.M.
(1974). Candidates' matches 1974. Centar Za Unapredivanje
Saha.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1978). Anatoly Karpov: His Road to the
World Championship. Elsevier. ISBN 0080211399.
* Botvinnik, M.M.; Estrin, Y. (1980). The Gruenfeld Defense.
Rhm Pr. ISBN 0890580170.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1981). Cafferty, B.. ed. Achieving the
Aim. Pergamon Press. ISBN 0080241204.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1981). Selected Games: 1967-1970.
Pergamon. ISBN 0080241239.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1982). Marfia, J.. ed. Fifteen Games and
Their Stories. Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, U.S.A: Chess
Enterprises. ISBN 0931462150.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1985). Botvinnik on the Endgame. Chess
Enterprises. ISBN 0931462436.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1996). Neat, K. and Stauss, E.. ed. Half
a Century of Chess. Cadogan Books. ISBN 1857441222.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (2000). Neat, K.. ed. Botvinnik's Best
Games Volume 1: 1925-1941. Moravian Chess. ISBN 807189317.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (2000). Neat, K.. ed. Botvinnik's Best
Games Volume 2: 1942-1956. Moravian Chess. ISBN 8071893706.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (2000). Neat, K.. ed. Botvinnik's Best
Games Volume 3: 1957-1970 - Analytical & Critical Works.
Moravian Chess. ISBN 8071894052.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (2002). Championship Chess: Match
Tournament for the Absolute Chess Championship of the USSR,
Leningrad-Moscow 1941. Hardinge Simpole. ISBN
9781843820123.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (2004). Match for the World Chess
Championship Mikhail Botvinnik-David Bronstein Moscow 1951.
Edition Olms. ISBN 3283004595.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (2004). Botvinnik, I.. ed. World
Championship Return Match: Botvinnik V. Tal, Moscow 1961.
Olms. ISBN 9783283004613.
++2.J2 Computers
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1970). Computers, Chess and Long-Range
Planning. Springer Verlag. ISBN 0387900128.
* Botvinnik, M.M. (1984). Computers in Chess: Solving Inexact
Search Problems. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0387908692.
++2.K Notable chess games
* Botvinnik vs Chekhover, Moscow 1935, Reti Opening, 1-0
* Botvinnik vs Capablanca, AVRO 1938, Nimzo-Indian Defense,
1-0 At first sight Botvinnik's opening play looks
unpromising, but he knew how his attack would develop.
* Keres vs Botvinnik, USSR Absolute Championship 1941, Nimzo-
Indian Defense, 0-1 Playing as Black, Botvinnik demolishes
a world title contender in 22 moves.
* Tolush vs Botvinnik, USSR Championship 1944, 0-1 Long-term
positional sacrifices.
* Denker vs Botvinnik, USA vs USSR radio match 1945, 0-1
Botvinnik uses the Botvinnik System in the Semi-Slav
Defense to bulldoze US champion Arnold Denker.
* Botvinnik vs Keres, Alekhine Memorial Tournament Moscow
1966, 1-0 Botvinnik shows his superior understanding of
closed positions, and when to open them.
* Botvinnik vs Portisch, Monaco 1968, 1-0 A fireworks display
starting with an exchange sacrifice on the c-file, a tactic
on which Botvinnik wrote the book.
++2.L Tournament results
1923 Leningrad 8 School championship - - - Botvinnik estimates
"about 10th out of 16".
1924 Leningrad - School championship 1st 5/6 +5 -1 =0
1924 Leningrad - non-category 1st 11/13 +11 -1 =1
1924 Leningrad - 2nd and 3rd Categories 1st 11/13 +11 -1 =1
1924 Leningrad - 2A Category - - - Tournament unfinished
1925 Leningrad - 2A and 1B Categories 1st 10/11 +10 -1 =0
1925 Leningrad - 1st Category 3rd 7/11 +7 -3 =1
1925 Leningrad - 1st Category - - - Tournament unfinished
1926 Leningrad - Leningrad Championship, Semi-finals 1st 11½ /
12 +11 -0 =1
1926 Leningrad - Leningrad Championship 2nd= 7/9 +6 -1 =2
1926 Leningrad - Northwest Provincial Championship, Semi-finals
tied 2nd 9/11 +8 -1 =2
1926 Leningrad - Northwest Provincial Championship 3rd 6/10 +4
-1 =5
1927 Leningrad - Tournament of "Six" 2nd 7/10 +6 -1 =3
1927 Moscow - 5th USSR Chess Championship tied 5th 12/20 +9 -4
=7
1928 Leningrad - Regional Metalworkers' Committee Championship
1st 8/11 +7 -1 =3
1929 Leningrad - Regional Committee of Educational Workers'
Championship 1st 11/14 +9 -0 =5
1929 Odessa - 6th USSR Chess Championship, Quarter-finals 1st
7/8 +6 -0 =2
1929 Odessa - 6th USSR Chess Championship, Semi-finals tied 3rd
2/5 +2 -2 =1
1930 Leningrad - Masters' Tournament 1st 6/8 +6 -1 =1
1931 Leningrad - Leningrad Championship 1st 14/17 +12 -1 =4
1931 Moscow - 7th USSR Chess Championship, Semi-finals 2nd 6/9
+6 -2 =1
1931 Moscow - 7th USSR Chess Championship 1st 13/17 +12 -2 =3
1932 Leningrad - Leningrad Championship 1st 10/11 +9 -0 =2
1932 Leningrad - Masters' Tournament in House of Scientists 1st
7/10 +6 -2 =2
1933 Leningrad - Masters' Tournament Tied 1st 10/13 +7 -0 =6
1933 Leningrad - 8th USSR Chess Championship 1st 14/19 +11 -2 =6
1934 Leningrad - Tournament including Euwe and Kmoch 1st 7/11 +5
-1 =5
1934 Hastings - Hastings International Chess Congress tied 5th
5/9 +3 -2 =4
1935 Moscow - 2nd International Tournament tied 1st 13/19 +9 -2
=8
1936 Moscow - 3rd International Tournament 2nd 12/18 +7 -1 =10
1936 Nottingham - International Tournament tied 1st 10/14 +6 -0
=8
1938 Leningrad - 11th USSR Chess Championship, Semi-finals 1st
14/17 +12 -1 =4
1938 Amsterdam, etc. - AVRO tournament 3rd 7/14 +3 -2 =9
1939 Leningrad - 11th USSR Chess Championship 1st 12/17 +8 -0 =9
1940 Moscow - 12th USSR Chess Championship tied 5th 11/19 +8 -4
=7
1941 Leningrad, Moscow - Absolute Chess Championship of the USSR
1st 13/20 +9 -2 =9
1943 Sverdlovsk - Masters' Tournament 1st 10/14 +7 -0 =7
1943 Moscow - Moscow Championship 1st 13/16 +12 -1 =3
1944 Moscow - 13th USSR Chess Championship 1st 12/16 +11 -2 =3
1945 Moscow - 14th USSR Chess Championship 1st 15/17 +13 -0 =4
1946 Groningen - International Tournament 1st 14/19 +13 -3 =3
1947 Moscow - Chigorin Memorial Tournament 1st 11/15 +8 -1 =6
1948 The Hague, Moscow - World Chess Championship Tournament 1st
14/20 +10 -2 =8
1951 Moscow - 19th USSR Chess Championship 5th 10/17 +6 -3 =8
1952 Budapest - Maroczy Jubilee tied 3rd 11/17 +7 -2 =8
1952 Moscow - 20th USSR Chess Championship tied 1st 13/19 +9 -1
=9 Defeated Taimanov in a play-off for first place.
1955 Moscow - 22nd USSR Chess Championship tied 3rd 11/19 +7 -3
=9
1956 Moscow - Alekhine Memorial tied 1st 11/15 +8 -1 =6
1958 Wageningen - International Tournament 1st 4/5 +3 -0 =2
1961-1962 Hastings - International Chess Congress (Premier) 1st 8/9
+7 -0 =2
1962 Stockholm - International Tournament 1st 8/9 +8 -0 =1
1965 Noordwijk - International Tournament 1st 6/7 +5 -0 =2
1966 Amsterdam - IBM Tournament 1st 7/9 +7 -1 =1
1966-1967 Hastings - International Chess Congress (Premier) 1st 6/9
+5 -1 =3
1967 Palma de Mallorca - International Tournament tied 2nd 12/17
+9 -1 =7
1968 Monte Carlo - International Tournament 2nd 9/13 +5 -0 =8
1969 Wijk aan Zee - Hoogovens (Grandmaster Section) tied 1st
10/15 +6 -0 =9
1969 Belgrade - International Tournament 7th 8/15 +5 -3 =7
1970 Leiden - Quadrangular Tournament tied 3rd 5/12 +1 -2 =9
Four players. Each opponent was played four times.
++2.L1 Match results
1933 Salo Flohr Tied Moscow, Leningrad 6 /12 +2 =8 -2 Challenge
1937 Grigory Levenfish Tied Moscow, Leningrad 6.5/13 +5 =3 -5
Challenge
1940 Viacheslav Ragozin Won Moscow, Leningrad 8/12 +5 =7 -0
Training
1951 David Bronstein Tied Moscow 12/24 +5 =14 -5 World title
1952 Mark Taimanov Won Moscow 3.5/6 +1 =5 -0 USSR Ch playoff
1954 Vasily Smyslov Tied Moscow 12/24 +7 =10 -7 World title
1957 Vasily Smyslov Lost Moscow 9/22 +3 =13 -6 World title
1958 Vasily Smyslov Won Moscow 12/23 +7 =11 -5 Rematch
1960 Mikhail Tal Lost Moscow 8/21 +2 =13 -6 World title
1961 Mikhail Tal Won Moscow 13/21 +10 =6 -5 Rematch
1963 Tigran Petrosian Lost Moscow 9/21 +2 =14 -5 World title
++3. Salo Flohr - Mikhail Botvinnik, Moscow 1933
Moscow 1933, Round 6
White: Salo Flohr
Black: Mikhail Botvinnik
Result: 1-0
ECO: E38 - Nimzo-Indian Defense, Berlin Variation
Notes by R.J. Macdonald
1. d4 Nf6
2. c4 e6
3. Nc3 Bb4
(The Nimzo-Indian Defense.)
4. Qc2 c5
(The Berlin Variation.)
5. dxc5 Na6
(5. ... 0-0 is also playable.)
6. a3 Bxc3+
7. Qxc3 Nxc5
8. f3 d6
9. e4 e5
10. Be3
(10. b4 Ne6 11. Bd3 0-0 12. Ne2 a5 13. Be3 Nh5 14. 0-0 g5 15. Rfd1 axb4 16.
Qxb4 Ra6 17. Nc3 Nhf4 18. Bf1 g4 19. fxg4 Qg5 20. Kh1 Qxg4 21. Rxd6 Nd4 22.
Rxa6 Nc2 23. Qb2 Nxe3 24. Rb6 f5 1-0 in 38 moves, as in the game Nguyen Anh
Dung (2533) - Liu Dede (2402), Kolkata 2001.)
10. ... Qc7
11. Ne2
(11. Bd3 Nxd3+ 12. Qxd3 Be6 13. b3 a5 14. a4 Nd7 15. Ne2 Nc5 16. Qc3 f5 17.
exf5 Bxf5 18. Rd1 0-0 19. 0-0 Rae8 1/2-1/2, as in the game B. Savage (2308) -
R. Berzinsh (2420), Coulsdon 2008.)
11. ... Be6
12. Qc2
(12. Ng3 0-0 13. Be2 Rfc8 14. 0-0 Na4 15. Qb4 Nc5 16. Qc3 Qd7 17. Rad1 b5 18.
Bg5 Ne8 19. Qb4 bxc4 20. f4 Rab8 21. Qd2 f6 22. f5 Bf7 23. Be3 Qb7 24. Rb1 Nxe4
25. Nxe4 Qxe4 26. Bf3 Qd3 0-1 in 35 moves, as in the game A. Zamikhovsky - V.
Kirillov, Moscow 1931.)
12. ... 0-0
13. Nc3 Rfc8
(13. ... a5 14. Rd1 Rfd8 15. Be2 gives white a slight edge.)
14. Be2 a6
(This secures b5. 14. ... a5 15. Rd1 Rd8 16. 0-0 is slightly better for white.)
15. Rc1
(15. 0-0 h5 gives white a solid advantage.) 15. ... Ncd7
(15. ... h5 16. 0-0 gives white a solid advantage.)
16. Qd2
(White has a moderate advantage.)
16. ... Qb8
(16. ... Qd8 17. b3 b5 18. Qxd6 bxc4 19. b4 gives white a solid advantage.)
17. Nd5 Bxd5
18. cxd5
(18. exd5?! Nc5 19. Rc3 a5 is slightly better for white.)
18. ... Rxc1+
19. Qxc1 Qd8
20. 0-0 Rc8
21. Qd2 Qc7
(21. ... Rc7 22. Rc1 gives white a solid advantage.)
22. Rc1
(22. Qb4 Qb8 gives white a solid advantage.)
22. ... Qxc1+
23. Qxc1 Rxc1+
24. Bxc1 Kf8
(24. ... Nc5 25. Kf2 gives white a solid advantage.)
25. Kf2
(25. Be3 Ne8 gives white a moderate advantage.)
25. ... Ke7
(25. ... Nh5 26. Be3 is solid for white.)
26. Be3 Kd8
27. Ke1 Kc7
(27. ... Ng8 28. Bd3 leaves white with a moderate advantage.)
28. Kd2 Nc5
(28. ... Ng8 29. b4 gives white a solid advantage.)
29. b4 Ncd7
30. g3
(30. a4 Ng8 gives white a solid advantage.)
30. ... Nb6
31. Kc2 Nbd7
(31. ... Na4 32. Bc4 leaves white with a solid advantage.)
32. a4 Nb6
(32. ... Ng8 33. Kc3 gives white a solid advantage.)
33. a5 Nbd7
34. Bc1
(34. Bf1 b5 gives white a solid advantage.)
34. ... Kd8
(34. ... Ng8 35. Kd3 gives white a solid advantage.)
35. Bb2
(35. Bf1 Kc7 is very strong for white.)
35. ... Ne8
(35. ... Ng8 36. Ba3 Kc7 37. Bc1 enables white to retain a strong position.)
36. Kd2
(36. Bc4 Nc7 and white keeps a strong position.)
36. ... Nc7
(36. ... f5 37. Bc3 is still strong for white.)
37. Ke3
(37. Bf1 g6 is still strong for white.)
37. ... Ke7
(37. ... f5 38. Kd3 allows white to keep the upper hand.)
38. Bf1
(38. g4 g5 is still strong for white.)
38. ... Nb5
(38. ... f5 39. h4 leaves white with a solid advantage.)
39. h4
(39. f4 h5 keeps the initiative for white.)
39. ... Nc7
(39. ... f5 40. Kd3 gives white a solid advantage.)
40. Bh3 Ne8
41. f4
(41. Bc3 Kd8 and white maintains his advantage.)
41. ... f6
(41. ... h5 42. fxe5 Nxe5 43. Bd4 is still solid for white.)
42. Bf5
(42. Bc1 Nc7 and white keeps the advantage.)
42. ... g6
43. Bh3 h6
(43. ... h5!? might be worth a try, but white still has a solid advantage.)
Key Move Diagram:
4n3/
1p1nk3/
p2p1ppp/
P2Pp3/
1P2PP1P/
4K1PB/
1B6/
8
Position after black's 43rd move.
44. Bc1
(White's advantage is now very strong.)
44. ... Ng7
(44. ... h5 45. Bd2 is very strong for white.)
45. fxe5
(45. f5!? g5 is very strong for white.)
45. ... dxe5
(White now has a moderate advantage.)
46. Kf3
(46. g4 h5 47. gxh5 Nxh5 gives white a solid advantage.)
46. ... h5
47. Be3 Kd6
(47. ... Ne8 48. g4 Nd6 49. gxh5 gxh5 50. Bf1 allows white to keep a solid
advantage.)
48. Bh6
(48. g4 hxg4+ 49. Kxg4 Kc7 retains a strong position for white.)
48. ... Ne8
49. g4 hxg4+
50. Bxg4 Nc7
(50. ... Ke7 51. Be3 Nd6 52. Be6 is strong for white.)
51. Be3 Nb5
52. Ke2
(52. Be6 Kc7 allows white to keep the pressure on.)
52. ... Nc7
(52. ... Kc7 53. Kd3 Nd6 54. Be6 is still strong for white.)
53. Kd3 f5
(53. ... Nb5 54. Bf2 is still strong for white.)
54. exf5 gxf5
(54. ... Nf6!? 55. Bh3 gxf5 56. Bxf5 Ncxd5 57. Bc5+ Kc7 is very strong for
white.)
55. Bxf5
(White now has a decisive advantage.)
55. ... Nxd5
(55. ... Nf6 56. Bc8 Ncxd5 57. Bxb7 Nxb4+ 58. Kc4 is very strong for white.)
56. Bd2
(56. h5!? Nxb4+ 57. Kd2 is decisive for white.)
56. ... N7f6
(White now has a moderate advantage.)
57. Kc4 Kc6
58. Bg6 b5+
(58. ... Nf4 59. Bc2 N4d5 60. Bg5 is very strong for white.)
59. Kd3
(Better is 59. axb6 Nxb6+ 60. Kb3, giving white a very strong position.)
Key Move Diagram:
8/
8/
p1k2nB1/
Pp1np3/
1P5P/
3K4/
3B4/
8
Position after white's 59th move.
59. ... Ne7?
(Better is 59. ... Kd6, though white retains a solid advantage.)
60. Be4+
(White's position is now very strong.)
60. ... Ned5
61. Bg5 Nh5
(61. ... Nxe4?? would be a terrible mistake: 62. Kxe4 Nc3+ 63. Kxe5 with a
decisive advantage for white.)
62. Bf3 Ng3
63. Bd2
(63. h5!? Nxh5 64. Ke4 Nxb4 65. Kxe5+ Kc5 66. Bxh5 Nc6+ 67. Ke4 Nxa5 68. Be7+
Kc4 69. Bf7+ Kc3 70. Kd5 is very strong for white.)
63. ... Kd6
(White has a moderate advantage.)
64. Bg4
Key Move Diagram:
8/
8/
p2k4/
Pp1np3/
1P4BP/
3K2n1/
3B4/
8
Position after white's 64th move.
64. ... Nf6??
(Black prepares the advance e4, but this leads to further unpleasantness.
Better would have been 64. ... Nf1 65. Bh6 Nxb4+ 66. Ke4 Ke7 67. Kxe5 Nc6+ 68.
Kf4 Nd2, but white still has a very strong position. 68. ... Nxa5 69. Bg5+ Kf8
70. h5 is very strong for white.)
65. Bc8
(White now has a decisive advantage.)
65. ... Kc6
66. Be1
(After 66. Bxa6 White can relax: 66. ... e4+ 67. Kd4 it is all but over.)
Key Move Diagram:
2B5/
8/
p1k2n2/
Pp2p3/
1P5P/
3K2n1/
8/
4B3
Position after white's 66th move.
66. ... e4+??
(This simply worsens the situation. 66. ... Nge4 67. Bxa6 Nd6 is still decisive
for white.)
67. Kd4 Ngh5
68. Bf5
(68. Bxa6!? makes it even easier for White: 68. ... Ne8 69. Kxe4 Nd6+ 70. Kf3
Nf6 and white should win easily.)
68. ... Kd6
69. Bd2
(Black resigned.)
1-0
Other related posts:
- » [blind-chess] Annotated Game #109: Salo Flohr - Mikhail Botvinnik, Moscow 1933 - Roderick Macdonald
