Alexey Pavlovich Sokolsky (3 November 1908

Penza Governorate Penza Governorate (russian: Пензенская губерния) was an administrative division (a '' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire and Russian SFSR, located in the Volga Region. It existed from 1796 to 1797 and again from 1801 to 1928; it ...

, Russian Empire – 27 December 1969

Minsk Minsk ( be, Мінск ; russian: Минск) is the capital and the largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach and the now subterranean Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the admi ...

, USSR) was a

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

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 of International Master strength in chess, a noted correspondence chess player, and an opening theoretician.

Chess career

In 1935, he took second in the RSFSR Championship. He won the

Ukrainian Chess Championship This is a list of all the winners of the Ukrainian Chess Championship, including those held when Ukraine was a Soviet republic and those held after Ukraine became independent. Players' names listed in parentheses indicate that the player won the to ...

twice, in 1947 and 1948, and was the runner-up in the 1958

Belarusian Chess Championship This is a list of the winners of the Belarusian Chess Championships. {, , valign="top" , :{, class="sortable wikitable" ! # !! Year !! Champions (men) , - , 1 , , 1924 , , Solomon Rosenthal , - , 2 , , 1925 , , Solomon Rosenthal , - , ...

. He also played in the 13th Soviet Championship in 1944, finishing with 7½/16 (tie for 8th–10th place); the 17th Championship in 1949, finishing with 8½/19 (12th place); and the 21st Championship in 1954, finishing last with 5/19. He was the first Soviet Correspondence Chess Champion (1948–1951).

Legacy

The name of Sokolsky is known now mostly for his opening research and development of the chess opening ''1.b4'' which became known as the Sokolsky Opening. It is also known as the Polish Opening or the Orangutan. Sokolsky Memorial master-norm tournaments have been held regularly in

since 1970. Sokolsky wrote over a dozen books. The most famous of these are ''The Modern Openings in Theory and Practice'' (1962) and ''Debyut 1.b2-b4'' (1963), a book about his

eponym An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Usage of the word The term ''epon ...

ous opening.

References

External links

* 1908 births 1969 deaths Soviet chess players Chess theoreticians 20th-century chess players {{ukraine-chess-bio-stub