Georgy Ilivitsky (30 April 1921 – 28 November 1989) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

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 ...

master. He is best known for reaching the 1955 Interzonal Tournament. Ilivitsky was an engineer, and scored a surprise result by coming equal 3rd–6th in the 1955 USSR Chess Championship. The championship was extremely strong: the joint winners were Vasily Smyslov (World Champion 1957–58) and Efim Geller; while equal with Ilivitsky were World Champion

Mikhail Botvinnik Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, ( – May 5, 1995) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster. The sixth World Chess Champion, he also worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist and was a pioneer in computer chess. Botvinnik ...

, and future World Champions Tigran Petrosian and

Boris Spassky Boris Vasilievich Spassky ( rus, Бори́с Васи́льевич Спа́сский, Borís Vasíl'yevich Spásskiy; born January 30, 1937) is a Russian chess grandmaster who was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from 1969 ...

.Soviet Chess 1917–1991

Andy Soltis Andrew Eden Soltis (born May 28, 1947) is an American chess Grandmaster (chess), grandmaster, author and columnist. He was inducted into the United States Chess Hall of Fame in September 2011. Chess career Soltis learned how the chess pieces move ...

The result qualified Ilivitsky for the 1955 Interzonal Tournament, where he came 10th and narrowly missed qualifying for 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 ...

References

1921 births 1989 deaths Chess International Masters Soviet chess players 20th-century chess players 1989 suicides Suicides in the Soviet Union {{Soviet-bio-stub