Learn from Legends

MIKHAIL TAL
Mikhail Botvinnik
 Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik (Russian: Михаи́л Моисе́евич Ботви́нник, pronounced [mʲɪxɐˈil məɪˈsʲejɪvʲɪtɕ bɐˈtvʲinʲnʲɪk]; August 17 [O.S. August 4] 1911 – May 5, 1995)
was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster and World Chess Champion for most of 1948 to 1963. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same
time, he was one of the very few players who achieved distinction in another career while playing top-class competitive chess. He was also a pioneer of computer chess.
 Botvinnik was the first world-class player to develop within the Soviet Union, 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[who?] 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 pupils include World
Champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik.
 Contents
 1Early years
 2Soviet champion
 3World title contender
 4World Champion
 5Team tournaments
 6Late career
 7Political controversies
 8Assessment
 8.1Playing strength and style
 8.2Influence on the game

 9Other achievements
 9.1Electrical engineering
 9.2Computer chess

 10Writings
 10.1Chess
 10.2Computers

 11Tournament results
 11.1Match results

 12Notable games
 13Notes
 14References
 15Further reading
 16External links
 Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik was born on August 17, 1911,[2] in what was then Kuokkala, Vyborg Governorate, Grand Duchy of Finland,[3][4] but is now the district of Repino
in Saint Petersburg.[5] His parents were Russian Jews, his father was a dental technician and his mother a dentist,[6] 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.[5][6] His
father forbade the speaking of Yiddish at home, and Mikhail and his older brother Issy attended Soviet schools.[5][6] Mikhail Botvinnik later said, "They asked me sometime:
What do you think of yourself by nationality? I answered: Yes, my situation is complex. I am a Jew by blood, Russian by culture, Soviet by upbringing."[7] On his religious
views, Botvinnik called himself an atheist.[8]
 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.[6]
 In autumn 1923, at the age of twelve,[2] 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.[6] 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.[6] Botvinnik won his first two tournaments organized by the Assembly. Shortly afterwards, Nikolai Krylenko, a devoted chess player and leading member of the Soviet
legal system who later organized Joseph Stalin's show trials, began building a huge nationwide chess organization, and the Assembly was replaced by a club in the city's
Palace of Labor.[6]
 To test the strength of Soviet chess masters, Krylenko organized the Moscow 1925 chess tournament. On a rest day during the event,[6] world champion José Raúl
Capablanca gave a simultaneous exhibition in Leningrad. Botvinnik was selected as one of his opponents, and won their game. [9] 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. [6]
 Botvinnik in 1927
 When Botvinnik finished the school curriculum, he was below the minimum age for the entrance examinations for higher education. [10] 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. [9] 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 Proletstud, 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.[10] 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 Proletstud, 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.[10] 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.[11]
 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, which was then regarded as inferior for Black, but which Model and Botvinnik analyzed more deeply and then played with great success.[12]
 Botvinnik 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.[13]
 Botvinnik married an Armenian woman named Gayane (Ganna) Davidovna, who was 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 Olya, who was born in 1942.
 Soviet champion[edit]
 Botvinnik vs. Yudovich,
USSR Championship 1933[14]
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 temporary transmission lines at the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station. He stayed on at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute to study for a Candidate of Sciences degree.[11]
 In 1933, he repeated his Soviet Championship win, in his home city of Leningrad, with 14/19, [15] 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.[11] Soon afterwards, Botvinnik was informed
that Alexander Ilyin-Genevsky, one of the older Soviet masters and a member of the Soviet embassy in Prague, had arranged a match between Botvinnik [11] and Salo Flohr,
a Czech grandmaster who was then regarded as one of the most credible contenders for Alexander Alekhine's World Chess Championship title.[16] The highest-level chess
officials in the Soviet Union opposed this on the grounds that Botvinnik stood little chance against such a strong international opponent. In spite of this attempt to dissuade
him, Krylenko insisted on staging the match, saying that "We have to know our real strength." [11]
 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.[11]
 In his first tournament outside the USSR, the Hastings 1934–35, 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.[17] Botvinnik wrote that he did not make this mistake again.[18]
 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.[19] 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.[17]
 Botvinnik vs. Lasker, 1936
 He 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.[17] This was played in Moscow in June 1936,[17] and
Botvinnik finished second, one point behind Capablanca and 2½ ahead of Flohr.[19] However, he took consolation from the fact the Soviet Union's best had held their own
against top-class competition.[17]
 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, [17] 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.[19][20] This was the first
tournament victory by a Soviet master outside his own country. [18] 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".[17]
 Levenfish vs. Botvinnik (right), 1937
 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.[17] 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 Levenfish.[21][22][23] 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.[21]
 Botvinnik won further Soviet Championship titles in 1939, 1944, 1945, and 1952, bringing his total to six. In 1945 he dominated the tournament, scoring 15/17;[24] however, in
1952 he tied with Mark Taimanov and won the play-off match.[15]