Issaak Yefremovich Boleslavski

Issaak Boleslawski, 1960
Association	Soviet Union
Born	June 9, 1919 Zolotonosha
Died	February 15, 1977 Minsk , Belarusian SSR , Soviet Union
title	Grand Master (1950)
Best Elo rating	2560 (July 1971)

Issaak Jefremovič Boleslavski ( Russian Исаак Ефремович Болеславский , scientific transliteration Isaak Efremovič Boleslavskij ; born June 9, 1919 in Solotonoscha near Poltava ; † February 15, 1977 in Minsk ) was a Soviet chess master and chess master .

Life

Boleslawski was born to a pharmacist . The family of four (Isaac had a brother) moved to the city of Dnjepropetrovsk soon after Isaac was born , where he learned the rules of chess at the age of nine and took part in his first student tournaments in 1933.

Even as a schoolboy he was a successful chess player. In 1935 he came third in the All-Republics youth tournament, a kind of forerunner of the USSR youth championship. In 1938, 1939 and 1940 he became champion of the Ukrainian SSR , and his victory in 1938 in Kiev was considered a sensation, since he started as a 19-year-old unknown student (he qualified with his victory at the championship of the Dnepropetrovsk region), who had no experience with master players.

In 1939 he received the Soviet title of Master of Sports . At the USSR championship in 1940 he shared 5th and 6th place with Mikhail Botvinnik . A year later he took part in the Absolute Championship of the USSR , one of the most important tournaments in chess history. Besides Boleslawski, Michail Botwinnik, Paul Keres , Vasily Smyslow , Andor Lilienthal and Igor Bondarewski also took part. Boleslawski's 4th place was very honorable.

After Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Boleslawski, who was released from military service due to health problems, was evacuated to Sverdlovsk , where he completed his studies in philology , which he had started in Dnepropetrovsk during the war . In Sverdlovsk he also met his future wife, whom he married in 1943.

In 1944 he was third in the USSR championship, in 1945 and 1947 each runner-up. In 1945 he was awarded the title of Grand Master of the USSR (the corresponding FIDE title he received in 1950) and in 1948 that of Honored Master of Sports .

At the first FIDE interzonal tournament in Saltsjöbaden in 1948, Boleslawski was third and qualified for the Candidates' tournament in Budapest in 1950. In Budapest he achieved the best result of his career: he shared 1st and 2nd place with David Bronstein . The two close friends (Bronstein was married to Boleslawski's daughter Tatjana (* 1946) until his death) had to play a playoff to determine the challenger of Mikhail Botvinnik. Boleslawski lost just 6½: 7½.

At the end of 1951, the Boleslavskis moved from Sverdlovsk to Minsk , Belarus , where Boleslawski, together with Alexei Sokolski and other Soviet players who had moved in, helped rebuild chess life in the Belarusian SSR , which had been shattered by the Second World War . Boleslawski's son Stanislav was born in Minsk in 1955.

At the next candidate tournament in 1953 in Zurich and Neuhausen , he shared 10th and 11th place. His biographer Alexei Suetin blames Boleslawski's poor performance in particular on his poor physical preparation. Boleslawski had prepared thoroughly theoretically for the tournament, but completely ignored the physical-sporting aspect. In this 28-round marathon tournament he either failed to win or even lost several well-designed games from "exhaustion" at the crucial moment. This poor result also had a negative impact on his self-confidence and was responsible for Boleslawski's declining creativity.

Boleslawski's best time as a tournament player was over. Although he still took part in tournaments at home and abroad, his results were only average. In 1970 he played his last tournament, the Sokolski Memorial in Minsk, and ended up on the tied 5-6. Space. He then ended his career as an active player.

Boleslawski won the Chess Olympiad in Helsinki in 1952 and the European Team Championships in Baden (Lower Austria) in 1957 and in Hamburg in 1965 with the Soviet national team .

Since the beginning of the 1950s, Boleslawski became increasingly involved as a trainer and opening theorist . Among other things, he trained the Soviet Olympic team and individual players, so he prepared z. B. the world champion Tigran Petrosjan on his world championship fights against Michail Botvinnik and Boris Spasski . After moving to Belarus in the 1950s , he also coached the republic team there. He left extensive analyzes on various openings.

Many of his ideas helped to better understand the Sicilian Defense and the King's Indian Defense in particular . His opening books have been translated into numerous languages ​​and have been the basis of the opening knowledge of the master level players for decades. The Boleslawski variant in the Sicilian Defense is named after Boleslawski : 1. e2 – e4 c7 – c5 2. Ng1 – f3 Nb8 – c6 3. d2 – d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8 – f6 5. Nb1 – c3 d7 – d6 6 Bf1 – e2 e7 – e5 . Hans Kmoch referred to a pawn formation in the King's Indian Defense as Boleslawski-Wall. Boleslawski's last rating was 2530, in July 1971 he reached its highest rating of 2560. Before the introduction of the rating, Boleslawski had its highest historical rating of 2760 in May 1950 .

Publications

• Grünfeld Indian to King Indian. Sportverlag, Berlin, 1969
• Sicilian. Sportverlag, Berlin, 1971
• Scandinavian to Sicilian. Sportverlag, Berlin, 1971

Web links

• Replayable chess games by Issaak Jefremowitsch Boleslawski on chessgames.com (English)
• Literature by and about Issaak Jefremowitsch Boleslawski in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Isaac Boleslavsky on his 100th birthday In: de.chessbase.com. June 9, 2019, accessed November 14, 2019.
2. ↑ http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=45134
3. ↑ Alexei Suetin: Grand Master Boleslawski . Fiskultura i Sport, Moscow 1981, p. 13 (from Russian)
4. ↑ Schachmaty w SSSR 1938, No. 12, pp. 551ff. (from Russian)
5. ↑ Alexei Suetin: Grand Master Boleslawski . Fiskultura i Sport, Moscow 1981, p. 22 (from Russian)
6. ↑ Alexei Suetin: Grand Master Boleslawski . Fiskultura i Sport, Moscow 1981, p. 28 (from Russian)
7. ↑ Alexei Suetin: Grand Master Boleslawski . Fiskultura i Sport, Moscow 1981, pp. 39–40 (from the Russian)
8. ↑ Alexei Suetin: Grand Master Boleslawski . Fiskultura i Sport, Moscow 1981, p. 53 (from the Russian)
9. ↑ Alexei Suetin: Grand Master Boleslawski . Fiskultura i Sport, Moscow 1981, p. 43ff. (from Russian)
10. ↑ Isaak Boleslawski's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
11. ↑ Isaak Boleslawski's results at the European Team Championships on olimpbase.org (English)
12. ↑ Hans Kmoch: The art of peasant leadership . Siegfried Engelhardt, Berlin 1956
13. ↑ Isaak Boleslawski's Elo development at olimpbase.org (English)
14. ↑ Isaak Boleslawski's historical Elo numbers at chessmetrics.com (English)