Alexander Nikolayevich Zaitsev (June 15, 1935 – October 31, 1971) was a
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
chess
Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...
grandmaster. He was born in
Vladivostok
Vladivostok ( ; , ) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia. It is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area o ...
,
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
and was also an
electrical engineer
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
.
Chess career
Zaitsev shared first place at the
1968 USSR Chess Championship in
Alma Ata
Almaty, formerly Alma-Ata, is the largest city in Kazakhstan, with a population exceeding two million residents within its metropolitan area. Located in the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains in southern Kazakhstan, near the border wi ...
. He eventually took the silver medal after losing the play-off to co-winner
Lev Polugaevsky
Lev Abramovich Polugaevsky ( rus, Лев Абрамович Полугаевский, p=pəlʊɡɐˈjefskʲɪj; 20 November 1934 – 30 August 1995) was a Soviet chess player. He was awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in ...
.
The website ''
Chessmetrics
Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo and Edo rating systems.
Implementation
Chessmetrics is a weighted average of past performance. The score considers a player's ...
'' lists his highest
ELO rating
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor.
The Elo system wa ...
as 2661 (January 1969) and his highest world ranking as 21 (achieved in April 1969 and May 1969).
Death
Zaitsev died at the age of 36. The cause of his death was not announced.
Legacy
His name is attached to the "Zaitsev Gambit" (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.h4) of the
Grünfeld Defence
The Grünfeld Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves:
:1. d4 Nf6
:2. c4 g6
:3. Nc3 d5
Black offers White the possibility of 4.cxd5, which may be followed by 4...Nxd5 and 5.e4, giving White an imposing duo. If White does not ...
.
References
External links
*
1935 births
1971 deaths
Chess Grandmasters
Russian chess players
Soviet chess players
{{Russia-chess-bio-stub