Andrei Yurievich Sokolov (russian: Андре́й Ю́рьевич Соколо́в; born 20 March 1963, in
Vorkuta
Vorkuta (russian: Воркута́; kv, Вӧркута, ''Vörkuta''; Nenets for "the abundance of bears", "bear corner") is a coal-mining town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic Circle in the Pechora coal basin at ...
,
Komi ASSR
The Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (russian: Коми Автономная Советская Социалистическая Республика; kv, Коми Автономнӧй Сӧветскӧй Социалистическӧй ...
,
Russian SFSR
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
,
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
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 disti ...
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
FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...
. At just 6 years of age, inspiration arrived in the form of a book of
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 the tutelage of renowned coach,
Vladimir Yurkov.
Alexey Suetin
Alexey Stepanovich Suetin (russian: Алексе́й Степа́нович Суэ́тин; November 16, 1926 – September 10, 2001) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster and author. He was the World Senior Chess Champion from 1996 to ...
attended the same sports club (Trud) and as senior Moscow coach, observed the youngster's progress closely. Sokolov won the minor championship of Moscow in 1981, but fared less well in the major Open Championship a short while later. He had yet to learn the subtleties of positional play, but already there was much to admire. Suetin described him as "a practical-minded chess player ... most concentrated, deprived of any impulsiveness and very persistent in attaining his aims."
Career
By 1982, the groundwork was paying off as he went on to win the
Junior World Chess Championship
The World Junior Chess Championship is an under-20 chess tournament (players must have been under 20 years old on 1 January in the year of competition) organized by the World Chess Federation (FIDE).
The idea was the brainchild of William Ritso ...
, held in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
. A strong entry had included
Joel Benjamin
Joel Lawrence Benjamin (born March 11, 1964) is an American chess player who holds the FIDE title of Grandmaster (GM). In 1998, he was voted "Grandmaster of the Year" by the U.S. Chess Federation. , his Elo rating was 2506, making him the No. ...
,
Iván Morovic
Iván Eduardo Morovic Fernández (born 24 March 1963) is a Chilean chess player with the title of International Grandmaster.
Born in Viña del Mar, he began to play chess at age 9. In 1979 he won the Pan American Junior Chess Championship. In 19 ...
,
Nigel Short
Nigel David Short (born 1 June 1965) is an English chess grandmaster, columnist, coach, and commentator, who is the vice-president of FIDE since October 2018. Short earned the Grandmaster title at the age of 19, and was ranked third in the w ...
and
Niaz Murshed
Niaz Murshed ( bn, নিয়াজ মোরশেদ; also Morshed; born May 13, 1966) is a Bangladeshi chess player. In 1987 he became the first South Asian to earn the Grandmaster title.
Early life
Murshed was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, ...
. At this time Sokolov was an
International Master
FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...
with an
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 ch ...
of 2450. At that time FIDE automatically awarded the International Master title to the winner of the Junior Championship. (Later the rule would be changed to make the Junior Champion a grandmaster.) His
Grandmaster status was achieved in 1984, a year of outstanding achievement for the 21-year-old as he rocked the chess world by winning the
Championship of the Soviet Union at his first attempt. Impressive was his penultimate round effort against ex-champion
Beliavsky who, playing white, quickly mounted a ferocious attack against Black's
king
King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king.
*In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...
position. It was however already a quality of Sokolov that he remain ice-cool under pressure. He not only repelled the attack, but launched a counter-offensive of his own and won a crucial game. It was also a year that saw him finish a creditable second at the strong
Novi Sad
Novi Sad ( sr-Cyrl, Нови Сад, ; hu, Újvidék, ; german: Neusatz; see below for other names) is the second largest city in Serbia and the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It is located in the southern portion of the Pan ...
tournament and advance his Elo rating up to 2550.
Representing the Soviet Union at the
Thessaloniki 1984 and
Dubai 1986 Chess Olympiads
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 ...
, his performances were assured, scoring close to 67% on each occasion and contributing to two team gold medals.
Sokolov's career highlight was the
1987 World Championship cycle, where he reached the final of the
Candidates Tournament
The Candidates Tournament (or in some periods Candidates Matches) is a chess tournament organized by FIDE, chess's international governing body, since 1950, as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship. The wi ...
. After qualifying through the
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 ...
and round-robin Candidates Tournament, he won matches against
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 ...
(6–2), and
Artur Yusupov (7½–6½). However, in the final however he lost to
Anatoly Karpov
Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov ( rus, links=no, Анато́лий Евге́ньевич Ка́рпов, p=ɐnɐˈtolʲɪj jɪvˈɡʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈkarpəf; born May 23, 1951) is a Russian and former Soviet chess grandmaster, former World Ches ...
, 3½–7½. Having beaten Karpov at
Bugojno
Bugojno ( sr-cyrl, Бугојно) is a town and municipality located in Central Bosnia Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is situated on river Vrbas, to the northwest from Sarajevo. Acco ...
1986, he felt his pre-match mood had been overly optimistic and described his defeat as "very severe".
Nevertheless, in 1987/88 his rating peaked at 2645 and he was listed as the third strongest player in the world behind
Garry Kasparov
Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by ...
and Anatoly Karpov. He even went on to defeat Karpov again at
Belfort
Belfort (; archaic german: Beffert/Beffort) is a city in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in Northeastern France, situated between Lyon and Strasbourg, approximately from the France–Switzerland border. It is the prefecture of the Territo ...
1988, a World Cup event.
However, he was unable to repeat his success in later World Championship cycles. In
the 1988 Candidates' matches, he unexpectedly lost his first-round match to
Kevin Spraggett
Kevin Spraggett (born 10 November 1954) is a Canadian chess grandmaster. He was the fourth Canadian to earn the grandmaster title, after Abe Yanofsky, Duncan Suttles and Peter Biyiasas. Spraggett is the only Canadian to have qualified for the ...
. In
the 1990 Interzonal he scored 6½ out of 13, failing to qualified for the Candidates.
Exceptionally, in 1990, he scored a resurgent win at the Moscow Open (finishing ahead of
Mikhail Tal
Mikhail Nekhemyevich Tal; rus, Михаил Нехемьевич Таль, ''Mikhail Nekhem'yevich Tal' '', ; sometimes transliterated ''Mihails Tals'' or ''Mihail Tal'' (9 November 1936 – 28 June 1992) was a Soviet-Latvian chess player ...
,
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 ...
,
Alexey Vyzmanavin and
Mikhail Krasenkov, among others). This preceded a period of lesser chess activity.
Move to France
He moved to France and acquired French nationality in 2000. While he has not yet won the
French Championship
The French rugby league championship (french: Le Championnat de France de Rugby à XIII) has been the major rugby league tournament for semi-professional and professional clubs in France since the sport was introduced to the country in the 1930s.
...
, he came close in 2003 when he tied first with
Joël Lautier
Joël Lautier () is a French chess grandmaster and one of the world's leading chess players in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1986, He won U-14 World Youth Chess Championship in Puerto Rico, Argentina. In 1988, he won the World Junior Chess Champ ...
and
Étienne Bacrot
Étienne Bacrot (; born 22 January 1983) is a French chess grandmaster, and as a child, a chess prodigy.
He competed at the Candidates Matches in 2007 and won the Aeroflot Open in 2009. He passed 2700 FIDE rating in 2004 and in January 2005 ...
, losing out to Bacrot in a playoff. In 2005, he finished equal second with 14-year-old
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (; born 21 October 1990), often referred to by his initials, MVL, is a French chess grandmaster who is the reigning World Blitz Chess Champion. With a peak rating of 2819, Vachier-Lagrave is the seventh-highest r ...
, behind Lautier.
There have been two appearances for the French Olympiad team (in 2002 and 2006) and he further represented his adopted country at the
European Team Chess Championship
The European Team Championship (often abbreviated in texts and games databases as ''ETC'') is an international team chess event, eligible for the participation of European nations whose chess federations are located in zones 1.1 to 1.9. This more ...
of 2003, held in
Plovdiv
Plovdiv ( bg, Пловдив, ), is the second-largest city in Bulgaria, standing on the banks of the Maritsa river in the historical region of Thrace. It has a population of 346,893 and 675,000 in the greater metropolitan area. Plovdiv is the c ...
.
Notable games
As a participant of the 1988–89 World Cup series, he competed at
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
,
Belfort
Belfort (; archaic german: Beffert/Beffort) is a city in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in Northeastern France, situated between Lyon and Strasbourg, approximately from the France–Switzerland border. It is the prefecture of the Territo ...
,
Reykjavík
Reykjavík ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói bay. Its latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. With a po ...
and
Rotterdam
Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...
, finishing an overall 11th from a field of 25 and winning a combined prize fund of $36,584. In the following game, played during the Brussels leg in 1989, Sokolov sacrifices a piece and then
the exchange in order to create a powerful double threat of two
passed pawn
In chess, a passed pawn is a pawn with no opposing pawns to prevent it from advancing to the eighth ; i.e. there are no opposing pawns in front of it on either the same or adjacent files. A passed pawn is sometimes colloquially called a ''pass ...
s on one wing and a attack on the other.
:Sokolov vs.
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 ...
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 0-0 9.h3 Bb7 10.d4 Re8 11.Ng5 Rf8 12.Nf3 Re8 13.Nbd2 Bf8 14.a4 h6 15.Bc2 exd4 16.cxd4 Nb4 17.Bb1 c5 18.d5 Nd7 19.Ra3 c4 20.Nd4 Ne5 21.axb5 Qb6 22.Nxc4 Nxc4 23.Rg3 Bc8 24.b3 Ne5 25.Be3 Ng6 26.f4 Qd8 27.f5 Ne5 28.Qd2 a5 29.Bxh6 Qh4 30.Kh2 Bd7 31.Bg5 Qh5 32.Rf1 g6 33.Nc6 Bxc6 34.dxc6 Rab8 35.fxg6 fxg6 36.c7 Rbc8 37.b6 Qh7 38.Rxf8+ Rxf8 39.Qxd6 Nbc6 40.Bf6 Rxf6 41.Qxf6 Qd7 42.b7
References
*
''Chess'' Magazine – Christmas 1985, pg.255, Alexei Suetin article.
*
Portrait of a Grandmaster. Andrei Sokolov website (in French)Olimpbase – Olympiads and other Team event information
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sokolov, Andrei
1963 births
Living people
People from Vorkuta
Chess grandmasters
Chess Olympiad competitors
French chess players
Russian chess players
Soviet chess players
World Junior Chess Champions