In his first attempt at the Soviet Championship final, the 22nd in the series, held in Moscow 1955, Spassky tied for third place with 11½ / 19, after Smyslov and Efim Geller, which was sufficient to qualify him for the Gothenburg Interzonal later that year.

Keene brought Victor Korchnoi and Garry Kasparov together for their 1983 Candidates ' semi-final match in London as part of the 1984 World Championship cycle ; the semi-final match between Vasily Smyslov and Zoltán Ribli was also played at the same site.

Similarly, in the 1953 Candidates ' Tournament at Neuhausen and Zürich, it has been speculated that there was pressure on the top non-Russian Soviets, Keres and Bronstein, to allow Vasily Smyslov to win.

In his final book, however, published in 2007, shortly after his death, Bronstein more strongly implied that Smyslov was favored for Zurich 1953 by the Soviet Chess Federation, and that other Soviet representatives were pressured to make this happen.

From there it was on to another near miss in the 1956 Candidates ' tournament in Amsterdam, where he wound up in a large tie for third through seventh places, behind winner Smyslov and runner-up Keres.

Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov (; 24 March 1921 – 27 March 2010 ) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster, and was World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958.

This proved that Smyslov was of genuine world-class Grandmaster strength at age 20, a very rare achievement at that time.

By this juncture, Smyslov had advanced into the group of the top three Soviet players, along with Botvinnik and Keres ( who was playing in Nazi-occupied Europe during the War ).

In the 1945 USSR Championship at Moscow ( URS-ch14 ), Smyslov was in the middle of the very powerful field with 8. 5 / 17 ; the winner was Botvinnik, with Boleslavsky and the new star David Bronstein occupying second and third places.

Smyslov found it tough going for the next while however, once he was back playing in Soviet events.

At Warsaw 1947, Smyslov scored 6 / 9 to tie for 2nd – 5th places ; the winner was Svetozar Gligorić.

With his second-place finish from the 1948 World Championship, Smyslov was admitted directly into the 1950 Budapest Candidates ' tournament without needing to play in qualifying events.

Over the course of the three World Championship matches, Smyslov had won 18 games to Botvinnik's 17 ( with 34 draws ), and yet he was only champion for a year.

Yet Smyslov was to write in his autobiographical games collection Smyslov's Best Games, " I have no reason to complain of my fate.

Smyslov was a frequent competitor at the Soviet Championships and enjoyed some notable successes.

Smyslov was known for his positional style, and, in particular, his precise handling of the endgame, but many of his games featured spectacular tactical shots as well.

Smyslov was a fine baritone singer, who only positively decided upon a chess career after a failed audition with the Bolshoi Theatre in 1950.

* Vasily Smyslov vs Mikhail Tal, Candidates ' Tournament, Yugoslavia 1959, Sicilian Defence, Najdorf / Opecensky Variation ( B92 ), 1 – 0 It was their first-ever meeting, and the young star Tal gets a sharp lesson from the veteran.

* Vasily Smyslov vs Anatoly Karpov, USSR Championship, Leningrad 1971, English Opening / Queen's Gambit ( A34 ), 1 – 0 Karpov was the young rising star, but here he lasts for only 29 moves against Smyslov, who is 30 years older.

Presumably for political reasons, he was excluded from the ten-player Soviet team for the 1945 radio match against the U. S. A., and he did not participate in the first great post-war tournament at the 1946 Groningen tournament which was won by Botvinnik, just ahead of Euwe and Vasily Smyslov.

Polgár is the only woman to have won a game from a current world number one player, and has defeated nine current or former world champions in either rapid or classical chess: Anatoli Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov.

and he landed one of the few speaking supporting roles in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as the Russian scientist Smyslov.

Smyslov finished third with 12. 5 / 19, and this confirmed his status as one of the world's top players.

* Vasily Smyslov vs Mikhail Botvinnik, World Championship Match, Moscow 1954, game 9, French Defence, Winawer Variation ( C17 ), 1 – 0 Smyslov blows up one of the World Champion's favourite variations with a queen sacrifice to score a stunning win.

* Mikhail Botvinnik vs Vasily Smyslov, World Championship Match, Moscow 1954, game 14, King's Indian Defence, Fianchetto Variation ( E68 ), 0 – 1 With one of the deepest pre-game home preparations ever seen, Smyslov unleashes a chain of tactical wizardry, including a queen sacrifice, to record a beautiful win which fundamentally changed the theory in this variation.

Botvinnik won this super-strong tournament, one of the strongest ever organized, with 13. 5 / 20, and Keres placed second with 11 / 20, ahead of Vasily Smyslov, Isaac Boleslavsky, Andor Lilienthal, and Igor Bondarevsky.

He was one of the five chess grandmasters to compete in the World Championship match tournament in The Hague / Moscow 1948 and finished in joint third place with Paul Keres, behind Mikhail Botvinnik and Vasily Smyslov.

In 1945 he played on board one in the USA vs USSR radio match, losing both games to Mikhail Botvinnik, and in 1946 travelled to Moscow for the return match, losing both games against Vasily Smyslov.

He advanced, but narrowly missed Candidates ' qualification at the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal 1970, tying with Vasily Smyslov for seventh / eighth places on 13. 5 / 23, after another late defeat at the hands of one of the outsiders ; the winner was Fischer.

In five European Team Championships, Smyslov won ten gold medals.

Smyslov also represented the USSR in five European Team Championships, and emerged with a perfect medals ' record: he won five team gold medals and five board gold medals.

Held jointly in The Hague and Moscow, the tournament was limited to five participants: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Paul Keres, Samuel Reshevsky, and Max Euwe.

He won in 1955 at Moscow ( URS-ch22 ) when, despite losing five games, he finished equal first with 12 / 19, then defeated Smyslov in the playoff match by the score of + 1 = 6.

Euwe played Vassily Smyslov as early as the Groningen 1946 chess tournament and Smyslov played current World Champion Viswanathan Anand at Groningen 1989, thus resulting in a chain of five degrees of separation.

* The top players of the day: world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, and those who had qualified for ( or been seeded into ) the inaugural Candidates Tournament in 1950: Isaac Boleslavsky, Igor Bondarevsky, David Bronstein, Max Euwe, Reuben Fine, Salo Flohr, Paul Keres, Alexander Kotov, Andor Lilienthal, Miguel Najdorf, Samuel Reshevsky, Vasily Smyslov, Gideon Ståhlberg, and László Szabó.

The opening has never been popular at the top level, though a number of prominent players have employed it on occasion ( for example, Richard Réti against Abraham Speijer in Scheveningen 1923 and Boris Spassky against Vasily Smyslov in the 1960 Moscow – Leningrad match ).

The players were Botvinnik, Keres, Smyslov, Isaac Boleslavsky, Igor Bondarevsky, and Andor Lilienthal.

* Vasily Smyslov vs David Bronstein, Candidates ' Tournament, Amsterdam 1956, English Opening ( A34 ), 1 – 0 The two players were fighting for the right to qualify, late in the tournament, and Smyslov finds a way to come out on top.

The defence was later adopted by a number of prominent players, including Vasily Smyslov, Viktor Korchnoi, Leonid Stein, and Bobby Fischer.

Bronstein, in his last book, Secret Notes, published in 2007 just after his death the previous year, confirmed long-standing rumours by writing that the nine Soviet grandmasters ( out of a field of 15 players ) at Zurich were under orders from both their chess leadership and the KGB to not let Reshevsky win the tournament under any circumstances, with Smyslov being the preferred victor.

However, few players have beaten six world champions ( Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Spassky, and Anatoly Karpov ) as Taimanov has.

His second place was shared with Milko Bobotsov and two World Champions, Vasily Smyslov and Mikhail Tal, ahead of two others, Boris Spassky and Tigran Petrosian, among a host of other strong players.

He won Wijk aan Zee 1972, which had six of the top 25 players, with 10. 5 / 15, ahead of Arturo Pomar, Walter Browne, Vlastimil Hort, and Vasily Smyslov.

In the past, a number of famous over-the-board players have also been International Judges, including Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, David Bronstein, Paul Keres, Yuri Averbakh and Wolfgang Unzicker, though in modern times the title is generally held by individuals largely unknown outside the world of problems.

His best result came in the 1940 championship, when he tied for first with Igor Bondarevsky, ahead of Smyslov, Paul Keres, Isaac Boleslavsky, Botvinnik, and 14 other players.

No shorter chain can be constructed between London 1851 and 2012, for while Emanuel Lasker also played at Hastings 1895, he never played an official tournament game with Smyslov, so that chain must still pass through Euwe or various other players to reach Smyslov and Anand.