Andrew Soltis

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Andy Soltis 2015.jpeg
Andrew Soltis, 2015
Association United StatesUnited States United States
Born May 28, 1947
Hazleton, Pennsylvania
title International Master (1974)
Grand Master (1980)
Current  Elo rating 2407 (September 2020)
Best Elo rating 2480 (January 1981)
Tab at the FIDE (English)

Andrew (Andy) Eden Soltis (born May 28, 1947 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania ) is an American chess player . Since 1980 he has had the title of Grand Master . Soltis is a prolific writer of chess literature .

Life

Soltis grew up in the Astoria neighborhood of New York . He learned to play chess at the age of 10 from a book he borrowed from a library. In 1962 he took part in a simultaneous event by Larry Evans at the Marshall Chess Club and became a club member there. He later won the club championship nine times (1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1974, 1977, 1979, 1986 and 1989).

He graduated from City College of New York in 1969 . He decided against a career as a professional chess player and began working as a journalist for the New York Post . Since 1972 he has been responsible for a weekly chess column. He also wrote the monthly column Chess to enjoy in Chess Life magazine from 1979 . In 1988 he was named Chess Journalist of the Year by the United States Chess Federation .

Soltis took part in student Olympics six times with the US team: Harrachov 1967 (2nd place), Ybbs 1968 (5th place), Dresden 1969 (7th place), Haifa 1970 (1st place), Mayagüez 1971 (2nd place ) and Graz 1972 (4th place). When he won the title in 1970, he also achieved the best individual result on the second board. At the tournament in Reggio Emilia in 1970 Soltis came fourth with 10 points from 15 games, and a year later he won there with 8.5 points from 11 games. For these successes he was awarded the title of International Master in 1974 . The grandmaster title followed six years later, having met the last required standard at a tournament in New York in 1980.

In 1977 and 1982 he was tied for first place at the US Open Chess Championships.

In 2011 he was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame . His Elo rating is 2407, but he has been inactive since 2002.

Soltis wrote a variety of chess books, some of which have also been translated into other languages. His biographies of Frank Marshall (1994) and Mikhail Botvinnik (2014) were from the English Chess Federation as Book of the Year Award. The books Soviet Chess 1917-1991 (2000) and Why Lasker Matters (2006) received the Cramer Award . However, the chess historian Edward Winter criticized the fact that in some of the books written by Soltis there were insufficient references to sources.

Soltis has been retired since 2014, but continues to write about chess. He is married and his wife also worked as a journalist for the New York Post .

Works

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ OlimpBase :: World Student Team Chess Championship :: Andrew Soltis. In: OlimpBase. Wojciech Bartelski, accessed on May 15, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Andrew (Andy) Soltis at worldchesshof.org, accessed on May 14, 2017
  3. ↑ Mark Weeks: Award Winning Chess Books , October 2012
  4. ↑ Chess: the Need for Sources , Chesshistory.com, April 1, 2017

literature

  • Andrew Soltis: Confessions of a grandmaster . Thinker's Press, Davenport 1990. ISBN 0-938650-46-7 .
  • Johannes Fischer: Andrew Soltis: New Yorker, grandmaster, author. In: KARL 2015,3, pp. 54–60.

Web links

Commons : Andrew Soltis  - collection of images
personal data
SURNAME Soltis, Andrew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Soltis, Andrew Eden; Soltis, Andy; Soltis, Andy E. (FIDE)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chess player and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Hazleton, Pennsylvania