A brief blog post dedicated to two collections of games by the 7th World Chess Champion.

Vasily Smyslov, pictured in play in the Amsterdam IBM tournament, July 1971. (Photo: H. Peters, ANEFO, via the Dutch National Archives.)

Vasily Smyslov (1921-2010) is a player who needs little introduction. Winner of two consecutive Candidates’ tournaments in 1953 & 1956, individual World Champion from 1957-58, over the course of his remarkably long career he won nine Olympiads, one World Team Championship and five European Team Championships as a member of the Soviet Team. At home, he was three times champion of Moscow. He was Soviet Champion in 1949 (perhaps surprisingly, despite appearing in nineteen USSR Championship finals between 1940 and 1988, this was his only gold medal). In 1984, at the age of 63, almost incredibly he made it through to the final of the Candidate’s matches, losing to Garry Kasparov. He made an outstanding contribution to chess theory in the most varied of openings. An outstanding composer of chess studies, he was made an International Arbiter of Chess Composition in 1957.

(To any readers wishing to learn more about Smyslov’s early life, I can wholeheartedly recommend Andrey Terekhov’s magnificent work ‘The Life & Games of Vasily Smyslov: Volume 1: The Early Years 1921-1948’, published by Russell Enterprises in December 2020. Further volumes are eagerly anticipated!)

During Smyslov’s lifetime, two important collections of his games were published in the Soviet Union*. These were Izbrannye partii (‘Selected Games’) and V poiskakh garmonii (‘In Pursuit of Harmony’), published by Fizkultura i Sport in 1952 and 1979, respectively. These books have been published in English translation, the former by Routledge & Kegan Paul, as ‘My Best Games of Chess 1935-57’ (edited and translated by Peter Clarke, published 1958) and the latter by Pergamon, as ‘125 Selected Games’ (translated by Ken Neat, published in 1983).

(*In 2003, a further volume, Letopis’ shakhmatnogo Tvorchestvo, ‘A Chronicle of Chess Creativity’, was published; this too has been translated into English by Ken Neat and was published in two volumes by ‘Moravian’, also in 2003.)

The author’s copy of ‘Izbrannye partii’.

However, both of these are long out of print and some readers of this blog may therefore be unfamiliar with their contents. Translations of a selection of games from these works may be downloaded via the links below. Smyslov’s choice of title for his second game collection was no accident – in reviewing the play of Smyslov at his best, the overwhelming sense is one of harmony – a feeling accentuated by the annotations of Smyslov himself, which as a rule strike the perfect balance between general considerations and concrete variations.

BONUS GAME:

In March 1981, by a decree of the Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev, Smyslov was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples, one of the Soviet Union’s highest civil honours. It marked the recipient’s accomplishments in promoting international friendship and co-operation, and in the cultural development of the Soviet Union itself. To mark the occasion, ‘Chess in the USSR’ published an article (edited by A. S. Suetin), containing tributes to the ex-World Champion by the likes of Mikhail Botvinnik and Tigran Petrosian, as well as annotations by Smyslov to a short selection of his games. A translation of the notes to one of these – his win v. Bent Larsen from the super-tournament at Tilburg in 1979 – may be downloaded via the link below. (Incidentally, this game also appeared in the Pergamon publication 125 Selected Games, referred to above.)

Above: the notice of the decree by L. I. Brezhnev and the Secretary of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, M. Georgadze, dated 24th March 1981. From ‘Chess in the USSR’ (No. 6, 1981).

Smyslov in play at the ‘National Tournament of Three Teams’, Moscow, April 1973. (Photo: D. Donskoi, Novosti Press.)