Rafael Vaganian
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Rafael Vaganian
Rafael Artemovich Vaganian ( hy, Ռաֆայել Արտյոմի Վահանյան, Rrafayel Artyomi Vahanyan, russian: link=no, Рафаэль Артёмович Ваганян, ''Rafael Artemovich Vaganyan''; born 15 October 1951) is an Armenian chess player holding the title of grandmaster (GM). He was Soviet champion in 1989. Chess career Vaganian achieved his Grandmaster (chess), Grandmaster title in 1971, at the age of 19. This followed an excellent result at the Vrnjacka Banja tournament the same year, where he took first place ahead of Leonid Stein and Ljubomir Ljubojević. It was also the year that he finished fourth at the World Junior Chess Championship, a competition won by the Swiss player Werner Hug. His international tournament record includes victories at Kragujevac 1974, São Paulo 1977, Kirovakan 1978, Las Palmas 1979, Manila 1981, Hastings International Chess Congress, Hastings 1982/83, Biel 1985 (the Interzonal), Leningrad 1987, Toronto 1990 and Ter Apel 1992. A ...
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Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Oxford Reference Online'' also place Armenia in Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region; and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the Lachin corridor (under a Russian peacekeeping force) and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the capital, largest city and the financial center. Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. The first Armenian state of Urartu was established in 860 BC, and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia. The Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great in the 1st century BC and in the year 301 became the first state in the world to adopt ...
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Interzonal
Interzonal chess tournaments were tournaments organized by the World Chess Federation FIDE from the 1950s to the 1990s. They were a stage in the triennial World Chess Championship cycle and were held after the Zonal tournaments, and before the Candidates Tournament. Since 2005, the Chess World Cup has filled a similar role. Zonal tournaments In the first year of the cycle, every FIDE member nation would hold a national championship, with the top players qualifying for the Zonal tournament. The world was divided into distinct zones, with the USSR, United States and Canada each being designated a zone, thus qualifiers from these three zones went directly to the Interzonal. Smaller countries would be grouped into a zone with many countries. For example, all of South America and Central America combined originally formed one zone. Interzonal tournaments The top players in each Zonal tournament would meet in the Interzonal tournament, which would typically have between 20 and ...
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Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 and 2021, with a rapid time control that affected players' online ratings. The use of the name "Chess Olympiad" for FIDE's team championship is of historical origin and implies no connection with the Olympic Games. Birth of the Olympiad The first Olympiad was unofficial. For the 1924 Olympics an attempt was made to include chess in the Olympic Games but this failed because of problems with distinguishing between amateur and professional players. While the 1924 Summer Olympics was taking place in Paris, the 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad also took place in Paris. FIDE was formed on Sunday, July 20, 1924, the closing day of the 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad. FIDE organised the first Official Olympiad in 1927 which took place in London. The O ...
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World Senior Chess Championship
The World Senior Chess Championship is an annual chess tournament established in 1991 by FIDE, the World Chess Federation. Overview Originally, the minimum age was 60 years for men, and 50 for women. Since 2014, the Senior Championship is split in two different age categories, 50+ and 65+, with separate open and women-only tournaments. Participants must reach the age of 50 or 65 years by December 31 of the year of the event. The championship is organized as an eleven-round Swiss system tournament. It is an open tournament, and each FIDE member federation may send as many players as desired. A separate women's tournament is held only if there are enough participants (at least 10 women from four different FIDE zones). The winners of the open tournaments (both age categories) are awarded the title of Grandmaster if they do not already have it; winners of the women's tournaments (both age categories) receive the Woman Grandmaster title if they do not already hold it. So far one Wo ...
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Elo Rating
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. The Elo system was invented as an improved chess-rating system over the previously used Harkness system, but is also used as a rating system in association football, American football, baseball, basketball, pool, table tennis, and various board games and esports. The difference in the ratings between two players serves as a predictor of the outcome of a match. Two players with equal ratings who play against each other are expected to score an equal number of wins. A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%. A player's Elo rating is represented by a number which may change depending on the outcome of rated games played. After every game, the winni ...
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Aeroflot Open
The Aeroflot Open is an annual open chess tournament played in Moscow and sponsored by the airline Aeroflot. It was established in 2002 and quickly grew to be the strongest open tournament; in 2013 it was converted to a rapid and blitz event, while in 2014 it wasn't held. The first event had around 80 grandmasters, while in the second event 150 grandmasters participated. The tournament is played using the Swiss system A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor (team or individual) does not play all the other ... and the winner is invited to the Dortmund chess tournament held later in the same year, a tradition begun in 2003. Beside the main tournament (A Group), there are also B and C-class tournaments. Winners The name of the winner is boldfaced as in some editions, a few players ended with the same overall score. Notes ...
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Lajos Portisch
Lajos Portisch (born 4 April 1937) is a Hungarian chess Grandmaster, whose positional style earned him the nickname, the "Hungarian Botvinnik". One of the strongest non-Soviet players from the early 1960s into the late 1980s, he participated in twelve consecutive Interzonals from 1962 through 1993, qualifying for the World Chess Championship Candidates Cycle a total of eight times (1965, 1968, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1985, and 1988). Portisch set several all-time records in Chess Olympiads. In Hungarian Chess Championships, he either shared the title or won it outright a total of eight times (1958, 1959, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1971, 1975, and 1981). He won many strong international tournaments during his career. In 2004, Portisch was awarded the title of ' Nemzet Sportolója' (Sportsman of the Nation), Hungary's highest national sports achievement award. He still competes occasionally. His main hobby is singing operatic arias; he has a fine baritone voice, a quality shared by Vasi ...
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Andrei Sokolov
Andrei Yurievich Sokolov (russian: Андре́й Ю́рьевич Соколо́в; born 20 March 1963, in Vorkuta, Komi ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...) is a chess Grandmaster (chess), Grandmaster of Russian origin, now living in France. He was one of the leading players in the world in the late 1980s. Formative years He learned the game from his father Yuri, a Soviet Army officer and Candidate Master. At just 6 years of age, inspiration arrived in the form of a book of Alexander Alekhine, Alekhine's games. At age 12, he attended one of the many chess schools that existed in and around Moscow and he occasionally frequented the legendary Pioneer Palace. Some major preparation followed in the years 1975–1982, mainly under ...
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USSR 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. It was held as a round-robin tournament with the exception of the 35th and 58th championships, which were of the Swiss system. Most wins *Six titles: Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal *Four titles: Tigran Petrosian, Viktor Korchnoi, Alexander Beliavsky *Three titles: Paul Keres, Leonid Stein, Anatoly Karpov List of winners : See also * Women's Soviet Chess Championship * Russian Chess Championship Publications * Mark Taimanov, Bernard Cafferty, Soviet Championships, London, Everyman Chess, 1998 () References Further reading *The Soviet Chess Championship 1920-1991
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Odessa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrative centre of the Odesa Raion and Odesa Oblast, as well as a multiethnic cultural centre. As of January 2021 Odesa's population was approximately In classical antiquity a large Greek settlement existed at its location. The first chronicle mention of the Slavic settlement-port of Kotsiubijiv, which was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, dates back to 1415, when a ship was sent from here to Constantinople by sea. After a period of Lithuanian Grand Duchy control, the port and its surroundings became part of the domain of the Ottomans in 1529, under the name Hacibey, and remained there until the empire's defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1792. In 1794, the modern city of Odesa was founded by a decree of the Russian empress Catherine t ...
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Reggio Emilia Chess Tournament
The Reggio Emilia chess tournament was an annual chess tournament held in Reggio Emilia, Italy. In Italian the tournament is called ''Torneo di Capodanno'' (New Year's tournament), as it used to start just after Christmas and end on the day of Epiphany (holiday), Epiphany (6 January). It was established as an annual event in 1958 by grandmaster Enrico Paoli. In 1982/83 the tournament attracted a new sponsor and by the 1990s the tournament had gained significant international reputation, climaxing in the 1991/1992 edition. This was the first Category (chess tournament), Category 18 tournament ever played; it was won by the 22-year-old Viswanathan Anand ahead of Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and Vassily Ivanchuk. It was Italy's oldest and most renowned chess tournament. The tournament was usually played as a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. The announced 55th edition had to be canceled due to economic reasons. Winners : See also *Hastings International Chess Congress Refere ...
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Bent Larsen
Jørgen Bent Larsen (4 March 1935 – 9 September 2010) was a Danish chess grandmaster and author. Known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play, he was the second strongest non-Soviet player, behind Bobby Fischer, for much of the 1960s and 1970s. He is considered to be the strongest player born in Denmark and the strongest from Scandinavia until the emergence of Magnus Carlsen. Larsen was a six-time Danish Champion and a Candidate for the World Chess Championship on four occasions, reaching the semifinal three times. He had multiple wins over all seven World Champions who held the title from 1948 to 1985: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, and Anatoly Karpov, but lifetime negative scores against them. From the early 1970s onward he divided his year between Las Palmas and Buenos Aires, with his Argentinian-born wife. He suffered from diabetes, and died in 2010 from a cerebral haemorrhage. Career Early ...
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