Vladimir Alexeyevich Alatortsev (russian: Влади́мир Алексе́евич Ала́торцев, pronounced "a LAH tart sev"; 14 May 1909 – 13 January 1987) was a Soviet
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
player, author, and administrator. During his career, he became champion of both
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
and
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, and played in the
Soviet Chess Championship
The USSR Chess Championship was played from 1921 to 1991. Organized by the USSR Chess Federation, it was the strongest national chess championship ever held, with eight world chess champions and four world championship finalists among its winners ...
finals nine times, with his best competitive results in the 1930s. He placed clear second in the 1933 Soviet final. He retired from most competitive play in the early 1950s, moving into roles as a chess organizer, teacher, and coach. He served as chairman of the All-Union chess section from 1954 to 1959 and as chairman of the
USSR Chess Federation from 1959 to 1961. By profession, he was a
hydraulics
Hydraulics (from Greek: Υδραυλική) is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counte ...
engineer.
Early years, peaks pre-war
Alatortsev was an early
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
chess rival of
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, ( – May 5, 1995) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster. The sixth World Chess Champion, he also worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist and was a pioneer in computer chess.
Botvinnik ...
, who later became World Champion. However, Botvinnik, who was two years younger, established complete dominance over Alatortsev right from the start, and wound up with a 9-0 lifetime won-loss score with two games drawn.
Alatortsev's first important high-level result was a shared 3rd-6th place in the
Soviet Championship,
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
1931, with a score of 10 points out of 17; Botvinnik won. Alatortsev was again runner-up to Botvinnik in the 1932 Leningrad Championship with 7/11. Alatortsev made his best Soviet Championship result in 1933 at Leningrad (URS-ch08), when he placed clear second with 13/19, as Botvinnik won his second title. At
Tbilisi
Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million pe ...
1933, he tied for 1st-2nd places with
Viktor Goglidze at 10/14.
He shared the Leningrad title in 1933–34 with
Georgy Lisitsin
Georgy Mikhailovich Lisitsin or Lisitsyn (russian: Гео́ргий Миха́йлович Лиси́цын; 11 October 1909 – 20 March 1972) was a Russian chess master from Leningrad. After high school he entered the Leningrad Industrial Insti ...
on 11/15. In the 1934 Leningrad International Alatortsev scored 4½/11, as Botvinnik won to continue his dominance, and scored 7/13 in the Leningrad National tournament in May 1934 for 8th place, as
Ilya Rabinovich
Ilya Leontievich Rabinovich (russian: Илья Леонтьевич Рабинович; 11 May 1891 – 23 April 1942) was a Russian and later Soviet chess player, among the best ones in his country for three decades, from 1910 to 1940. His best ...
won. In the 1934 Soviet Championship at Leningrad, he scored 10½/19 for a tied 5th-8th place;
Grigory Levenfish
Grigory Yakovlevich Levenfish (russian: Григо́рий Я́ковлевич Левенфи́ш; – 9 February 1961) was a Soviet chess player who scored his peak competitive results in the 1920s and 1930s. He was twice Soviet champion ...
and Ilya Rabinovich won. He earned a place in the
1935 Moscow International tournament, the strongest Soviet event since 1925, and finished with a even score of 9½ /19, as Botvinnik and
Salo Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr (November 21, 1908 – July 18, 1983) was a Czechoslovak and Soviet chess player and writer. He was among the first recipients of the title International Grandmaster from FIDE in 1950. Flohr dominated many tournam ...
won.
Alatortsev drew a 12-game match (+4 =4 −4) with the Hungarian
Andor Lilienthal
Andor (André, Andre, Andrei) Arnoldovich Lilienthal Reuben Fine, ''The World's Great Chess Games'', Dover Publications, 1983, p. 216. . (5 May 1911 – 8 May 2010) was a Hungarian and Soviet chess player. In his long career, he played against te ...
in 1935. He was jointly
champion of Moscow in both 1936 and 1937. Then in the 1937 Soviet Championship at
Tbilisi
Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million pe ...
, Alatortsev made 9½/19 to tie 10th-12th places.
Alatortsev posted his second best pre-war result when he tied for 1st-2nd places with Leonid Shamaev in a strong tournament at Leningrad 1938, with 14/21, ahead of Lilienthal and
Viacheslav Ragozin
Viacheslav Vasilyevich Ragozin (russian: Вячесла́в Васи́льевич Раго́зин; 8 October 1908 – 11 March 1962) was a Soviet chess player, writer and editor. He was world champion in correspondence chess and held the title ...
.
Chessmetrics
Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system.
Implementation
Chessmetrics is a weighted average of past performance. The score considers a player's win percen ...
.com ranks this as a 2684 performance. In the Leningrad-Moscow tournament of 1939, Alatortsev tied for 9th-10th places on 9/17, as Flohr won.
He had to qualify for the next Soviet final, and in the semi-final at
Kiev
Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe.
Ky ...
1940, he scored 9½/16 to tie for 4th-7th places, but did not advance to the final, losing out on tiebreak. Chessmetrics ranks him as #21 in the world for August 1940, with a rating of 2626.
War years
With the
invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
in June 1941, organized chess was put to a stop for the next several years; but Alatortsev's solid pre-war results earned him an invitation to a strong event at
Kuibyshev 1942. He made 6½/11 for seventh place, as
Isaac Boleslavsky
Isaac Yefremovich Boleslavsky ( uk, Ісаак Єфремович Болеславський, russian: Исаак Ефремович Болеславский; 9 June 1919 – 15 February 1977) was a Soviet chess player and writer.
Early caree ...
won. He then scored 7/15 at the 1942 Moscow Championship.
Post-war form drops
With the
Axis
An axis (plural ''axes'') is an imaginary line around which an object rotates or is symmetrical. Axis may also refer to:
Mathematics
* Axis of rotation: see rotation around a fixed axis
* Axis (mathematics), a designator for a Cartesian-coordinat ...
forces in full retreat by 1944, organized chess slowly got going again in the Soviet Union. Alatortsev struggled in the 1944 Soviet Championship at Moscow with just 5½/16 for 16th place, as Botvinnik won. He had to return to qualifying for the next Soviet final, and made it through at Moscow in the semi-final with 10½/15 to tie for 2nd-4th places, as
David Bronstein
David Ionovich Bronstein (russian: Дави́д Ио́нович Бронште́йн; February 19, 1924 – December 5, 2006) was a Soviet and Ukrainian chess player. Awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1950, he narro ...
won. In the final that same year in Moscow, he scored just 7½/17, as Botvinnik dominated the field.
Alatortsev played the 1945
Latvian Championship at
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the ...
, and won the tournament (but not the title; he was playing ''hors concours''). He scored 8½/15 in the 1946 Moscow Championship to tie for 4th-5th places, as Bronstein won again. He was below 50 per cent for the next two Soviet finals as well; in the Soviet Championship at Leningrad 1947, he made 7½/19, as
Paul Keres
Paul Keres (; 7 January 1916 – 5 June 1975) was an Estonian chess grandmaster and chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, and narrowly missed a chance at a World Chess Championship match on five ...
won, and then in the next edition at Moscow 1948, he finished well down with 7½/18, as Bronstein and
Alexander Kotov
Alexander Alexandrovich Kotov (Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Ко́тов; – 8 January 1981) was a Soviet chess grandmaster and author. He was a Soviet chess champion, a two-time world title Candidate, and a prolific write ...
won. Alatortsev qualified successfully through the semi-final at Moscow 1949 with 9½/16, and then he played his last Soviet Championship final at Moscow 1950, scoring 9/17 to tie for 7th-10th places, as Keres won.
Coach, organizer, author
It was clear that the new generation of Soviet players was taking over the top places in tournaments. Players such as
Alexander Kotov
Alexander Alexandrovich Kotov (Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Ко́тов; – 8 January 1981) was a Soviet chess grandmaster and author. He was a Soviet chess champion, a two-time world title Candidate, and a prolific write ...
,
Isaac Boleslavsky
Isaac Yefremovich Boleslavsky ( uk, Ісаак Єфремович Болеславський, russian: Исаак Ефремович Болеславский; 9 June 1919 – 15 February 1977) was a Soviet chess player and writer.
Early caree ...
,
David Bronstein
David Ionovich Bronstein (russian: Дави́д Ио́нович Бронште́йн; February 19, 1924 – December 5, 2006) was a Soviet and Ukrainian chess player. Awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1950, he narro ...
,
Efim Geller
Efim Petrovich Geller (russian: Ефим Петрович Геллер, uk, Юхим Петрович Геллер; 8 March 1925 – 17 November 1998) was a Soviet chess player and world-class grandmaster at his peak. He won the Soviet Champi ...
,
Yuri Averbakh
Yuri Lvovich Averbakh (russian: Ю́рий Льво́вич Аверба́х; 8 February 1922 – 7 May 2022) was a Russian chess grandmaster and author. He was chairman of the USSR Chess Federation from 1973 to 1978. He was the first centenar ...
,
Tigran Petrosian
Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian (, ; 17 June 1929 – 13 August 1984) was a Soviet-Armenian chess grandmaster, and World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. He was nicknamed "Iron Tigran" due to his almost-impenetrable defensive playing style ...
, and
Mark Taimanov were all younger and had the benefits of organized Soviet training, so they surpassed the older generation in their achievements. Alatortsev moved into a training role in the late 1940s, assisting the rising star
Vasily Smyslov
Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov ( rus, Васи́лий Васи́льевич Смысло́в, Vasíliy Vasíl'yevich Smyslóv; 24 March 1921 – 27 March 2010) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster, who was World Chess Champion from 1957 t ...
. He also became involved in tournament organization and administration. Alatortsev was awarded the title
International Master
FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...
by
FIDE
The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...
, the World Chess Federation, in 1950, when this title was introduced officially.
Alatortsev stopped playing major tournaments in the early 1950s, but occasionally took part in lesser events. He served as head of the
Soviet Chess Federation from 1954 to 1961, during a time when there were about three million registered Soviet players. From 1943 to 1974, he was the editor of a chess column in the newspaper ''
Vechernyaya Moskva''. In 1960, he published the book ''Modern Chess Theory''. His final strong tournament was
Tbilisi
Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million pe ...
1965, where at age 56 he made 8/17.
Alatortsev never got the opportunity to compete outside the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Honorary Emeritus
Grandmaster title by FIDE in 1983. Alatortsev died at age 77, on 13 January 1987 in Moscow.
In the
ECO database, the D31 line of the
Queens Gambit Declined is named for Alatortsev.
[D31 QGD: Alatortsev, 5.Bf4]
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alatortsev, Vladimir
1909 births
1987 deaths
Chess grandmasters
Soviet chess players
Soviet chess writers
Soviet male writers
Chess administrators
Chess coaches