Winner of the prestigious 2021 FIDE Book of the Year Award
Chess Journalists of America Book of the Year Award for 2021
The Life & Games of the Seventh World Chess Champion
Vasily Smyslov, the seventh world champion, had a long and illustrious
chess career. He played close to 3,000 tournament games over seven
decades, from the time of Lasker and Capablanca to the days of Anand and
Carlsen. From 1948 to 1958, Smyslov participated in four world
championships, becoming world champion in 1957.
Smyslov continued playing at the highest level for many years and made a
stunning comeback in the early 1980s, making it to the finals of the
candidates' cycle. Only the indomitable energy of 20-year-old Garry
Kasparov stopped Smyslov from qualifying for another world championship
match at the ripe old age of 63!
In this first volume of a multi-volume set, Russian FIDE master Andrey
Terekhov traces the development of young Vasily from his formative years
and becoming the youngest grandmaster in the Soviet Union to finishing
second in the world championship match tournament.
With access to rare Soviet-era archival material and invaluable family
archives, the author complements his account of Smyslov's growth into an
elite player with dozens of fascinating photographs, many never seen
before, as well as 49 deeply annotated games. German grandmaster Karsten
Müller's special look at Smyslov's endgames rounds out this fascinating
first volume.
[This book] is an extremely well-researched look at his life and
games, a very welcome addition to the body of work about Smyslov... -
from the Foreword by Peter Svidler
About the Author
St. Petersburg native Andrey Terekhov is a FIDE Master, an ICCF
International Master (correspondence chess) and holds a Ph.D. in
Computer Science. His best results at the board were victories in the
2008 Munich Open and the 2012 Nabokov Memorial. He currently resides in
Singapore. This is his first book for Russell Enterprises.
