Prince Sergey Semyonovich Urusov russian: Сергей Семёнович Уру́сов (3 August 1827 – 20 November 1897) was a leading 19th century Russian

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 ...

player; he was also a self-published amateur mathematician. His brother Dmitry Urusov (1829-1903) was also a strong player. He was a member of the

Russian nobility The Russian nobility (russian: дворянство ''dvoryanstvo'') originated in the 14th century. In 1914 it consisted of approximately 1,900,000 members (about 1.1% of the population) in the Russian Empire. Up until the February Revolution ...

, holding the title of Prince (

Knyaz , or ( Old Church Slavonic: Кнѧзь) is a historical Slavic title, used both as a royal and noble title in different times of history and different ancient Slavic lands. It is usually translated into English as prince or duke, dependi ...

), and an officer in the Tsarist army. In 1853 he played a few games against Alexander Petrov who was visiting

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

; the score is usually given as 3–1 in favour of Petrov (sources vary on this). The same year he won a match against

Ilya Shumov Ilya Stepanovich Shumov (russian: Илья́ Степа́нович Шу́мов, 28 June 1819 in Arkhangelsk – July 1881 in Sevastopol) was a Russian chess master. He served as an officer in the Russian Navy until 1847, then worked as a civil ...

by 4–3, and again in 1854 by a score of 12–9. Also in 1854, he drew a match against

Carl Jaenisch Carl Ferdinand von Jaenisch (russian: Карл Андреевич Яниш, ''Karl Andreyevich Yanish''; April 11, 1813 – March 7, 1872) was a Finnish and Russian chess player and theorist. In the 1840s, he was among the top players in the ...

by a score of 2-2. He fought in the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...

in 1854–55, and was awarded the Order of Saint George for bravery during the Siege of Sevastopol. During the war he met

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

; the two became long term friends, exchanging frequent correspondence. They later fell out after Tolstoy left the

Russian Orthodox Church , native_name_lang = ru , image = Moscow July 2011-7a.jpg , imagewidth = , alt = , caption = Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia , abbreviation = ROC , type ...

. Following the Crimean War, he left the army and devoted himself to chess. There were few organised tournaments at the time, so his chess activity consisted primarily of individual matches. He was considered the second strongest Russian player after Petrov, who beat him again in 1859 by a score of +13 −7 =1; the same year he won matches against Shumov and Viktor Mikhailov. He drew a match against the Austrian Ignatz Kolisch in 1862, who was one of the strongest players in the world at the time, and defeated the strong German player

Philipp Hirschfeld Philipp Hirschfeld (1 October 1840 – 4 October 1896) was a German chess player and theoretician.Egbert Meissenburg, ''Juden im Schachleben Deutschlands 1830-1930'' in ''Menora: Jahrbuch für deutsch-jüdische Geschichte 1996'' Hirschfeld was ...

in 1866. In 1878 he retired from chess and bequeathed his valuable collection of chess books to

Ilya Tolstoy Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy (; 22 May 1866 – 11 December 1933) was a Russian writer, and the third child and second son of Leo Tolstoy. Early life Ilya was born at Yasnaya Polyana and spent most of his young life there, until the family took ...

. The Urusov Gambit in the Bishop's Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nf3) is named after him.

References

External links

*
Urusov's playing record
at edochess.ca {{DEFAULTSORT:Urusov, Sergey Semyonovich Russian chess players 1827 births 1897 deaths 19th-century chess players