Mikhail Markovich Umansky (Russian: ; January 21, 1952 – December 17, 2010) 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 disti ...
grandmaster of
correspondence chess
Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, traditionally through the postal system. Today it is usually played through a correspondence chess server, a public internet chess forum, or email. Less common ...
, who was the 13th ICCF World Champion in correspondence chess between 1989 and 1998. He was also USSR Correspondence Champion in 1978.
Chess biography
Umansky was born in
Stavropol
Stavropol (; rus, Ставрополь, p=ˈstavrəpəlʲ) is a city and the administrative centre of Stavropol Krai, Russia. As of the 2021 Census, its population was 547,820, making it one of Russia's fastest growing cities.
It was known as ...
, then
USSR
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 nationa ...
. He is considered by some to be the greatest correspondence chess player of all time, since he convincingly won a "champion of champions" tournament, the ICCF 50 Years World Champion Jubilee, a special invitational correspondence tournament involving all living former ICCF World Champions. He scored 7/8 (+6 −0 =2), two points ahead of
Gert Jan Timmerman
Gert Jan Timmerman (born 15 April 1956) is a Dutch 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 s ...
,
Fritz Baumbach
Friedrich (Fritz) Baumbach (born 8 September 1935 in Weimar, Germany) is a German International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster, most famous for being the eleventh ICCF World Champion, 1983–1989. He was also East German Champion in 1970.
...
and
Victor Palciauskas
Victor Palciauskas (born Vytautas Palčiauskas; October 3, 1941 in Kaunas) is a Lithuania-born American chess player who holds the chess title of International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster. He was the tenth World Correspondence Chess Champi ...
. One of his victims was
Hans Berliner
Hans Jack Berliner (January 27, 1929 – January 13, 2017) was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and was the World Correspondence Chess Champion, from 1965–1968. He was a Grandmaster of Correspondence Chess. H ...
, who said after his defeat: "It is amazing that Umansky took only 55 days to play this wonderful game. I still do not know when I went wrong."
Umansky died on December 17, 2010 in
Augsburg
Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...
, Germany.
In 2011, the Russian Correspondence Chess Association organized in his honor the chess tournament Umansky Memorial, won by the Italian CCGM
Eros Riccio
Eros Riccio (born December 1, 1977 in Lucca) is an Italian International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster, Advanced Chess Champion and chess opening book author. He is FICGS World Champion and ICCF vice-European Champion and Olympic bronze with ...
.
Umansky Memorial
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References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Umansky, Mikhail
1952 births
2010 deaths
World Correspondence Chess Champions
Correspondence chess grandmasters
Russian chess players
Soviet chess players