Lev Polugaevsky
Lev Abramovich Polugaevsky was a Soviet chess player. He was awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1962 and was a frequent contender for the World Championship, although he never achieved that title. He was one of the strongest players in the world from the early 1960s until the late 1980s, as well as a distinguished author and opening theorist whose contributions in this field remain important to the present day.
Career
Lev Polugaevsky was born in Mogilev, in the Soviet Union, and, after being evacuated during the Second World War, grew up in Kuybyshev. He began playing chess around the age of 10. In 1948, he attracted the attention of Candidate Master Alexy Ivashin, who became his first teacher. International Master Lev Aronin, who lived in Moscow but had family in Kuybyshev, eventually became the teacher whom Polugaevsky credited most for his development. Additionally, between 1950 and 1953 he trained with Rashid Nezhmetdinov. Unlike many of his grandmaster colleagues, his development in chess came slowly, and he did not receive the Soviet master title until he was an adult. His progress then accelerated rapidly, however, and by the late 1960s he was one of the world's strongest players, as was recognized by his participation in the famous "USSR vs. Rest of the World" match of 1970. In this match he occupied fourth board, losing one game to Vlastimil Hort and drawing his other three. Until 1973, Polugaevsky did not pursue chess as a career, working as an engineer and taking time off for tournaments.Polugaevsky won at Mar del Plata in 1962 and 1971. He won or tied in the USSR Chess Championship three times. He played regularly in qualifying events to select a challenger for the world championship, qualifying for the Candidates Tournament on three occasions. His greatest advancement toward the title came during the 1977 and 1980 cycles, when he defeated Henrique Mecking and former world champion Mikhail Tal, respectively, in quarterfinal Candidates matches, before succumbing both times in the semifinals to the eventual challenger, Viktor Korchnoi.
Polugaevsky played on the Soviet national team in seven Chess Olympiads, in 1966, 1968, 1970, 1978, 1980, 1982 and 1984. His team won the gold medal on each occasion, except in 1978, when the USSR finished second to Hungary.
Author
In addition to his over-the-board and theoretical successes, Polugaevsky was a highly respected chess author. His 1977 book Grandmaster Preparation is a classic that contains notable insights into his own thinking as he crafted the ultra-sharp eponymous variation in the main line Najdorf Sicilian Defence. He went about his writing with the same meticulous care as characterized his analyses, and was contemptuous of the many less thorough authors who sought to profit from the post-Fischer chess boom with shoddy work, memorably commenting that "Ninety per cent of all chess books you can open at page one and then immediately close again for ever. Sometimes you see books that have been written in one month. I don't like that. You should take at least two years for a book, or not do it all."Books by Polugaevsky
- Queen's Gambit: Orthodox Defence
- Grandmaster Preparation,
- Grandmaster Performance,
- Grandmaster Achievement
- Art of Defence in Chess
- The Sicilian Labyrinth
- Sicilian Love – Lev Polugaevsky Chess Tournament 1994 , with Jeroen Piket, the New in Chess Editorial team, 1995, 240 p.,
Death