Mikhail Botvinnik

Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik (; ; – May 5, 1995) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster who held five world titles in three different reigns. The sixth World Chess Champion, he also worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist and was a pioneer in computer chess, the last of which he was awarded an honorary mathematics degree for.

Botvinnik was the first world-class player to develop within the Soviet Union. He played a major role in the organization of chess, making a significant contribution to the design of the World Chess Championship system after World War II and becoming a leading member of the coaching system that enabled the Soviet Union to dominate top-class chess during that time. His pupils include World Champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, and Vladimir Kramnik. He is often described as the patriarch of the Soviet chess school and is revered for his analytical approach to chess.

Early years Botvinnik was born on August 17, 1911, now the district of Repino in Saint Petersburg. His parents were Russian Jews; his father, Moisei Botvinnik (1878–1931), was a dental technician and his mother, Shifra (Serafima) Rabinovich (1876–1952), a dentist, which allowed the family to live outside the Pale of Settlement, to which most Jews in the Russian Empire were restricted at the time. As a result, Botvinnik grew up in Saint Petersburg's Nevsky Prospect. His father forbade speaking Yiddish at home, and Mikhail and his older brother Isaak "Issy" attended Soviet schools. Botvinnik later recounted, "I was asked once, "What do you consider yourself to be from the point of view of nationality?" My reply was, "Yes, my position is 'complicated'. I am a Jew by blood, a Russian by culture, Soviet by upbringing."" On his religious views, he called himself an atheist.

In 1920, his mother became ill and his father left the family, but maintained contact with the children, even after his second marriage to a Russian woman. At about the same time, Botvinnik started reading newspapers, and became a committed communist. While waiting, he qualified for his first USSR Championship final stage in 1927 as the youngest player ever at that time, tied for fifth and sixth places and gained the title of master.

Botvinnik won the Leningrad Masters' tournament in 1930

In 1935, Botvinnik married Gayane Davidovna Ananova, of Armenian descent, who was the daughter of his algebra and geometry teacher. She was a student at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in Leningrad and, later, a ballerina in the Bolshoi Theatre. They had one daughter, named Olga, who was born in 1942.

Soviet champion

In 1931, at the age of 20, Botvinnik won his first Soviet Championship in Moscow, He commented that the field was not very strong, as some of the pre-Revolution masters were absent. In late summer 1931, he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, after completing a practical assignment on temporary transmission lines at the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station. He stayed on at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute to study for a Candidate of Sciences degree. The highest-level chess officials in the Soviet Union opposed this on the grounds that Botvinnik stood little chance against such a strong international opponent. In spite of this attempt to dissuade him, Krylenko insisted on staging the match, saying that "We have to know our real strength." Botvinnik wrote that he did not make this mistake again.

Botvinnik placed first equal with Flohr, ½ point ahead of Lasker and one point ahead of José Raúl Capablanca, in Moscow's second International Tournament, held in 1935. After consulting Capablanca and Lasker, Krylenko proposed to award Botvinnik the title Grandmaster, but Botvinnik objected that "titles were not the point." However, he accepted a free car and a 67% increase in his postgraduate study grant, both provided by the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. This was the first tournament victory by a Soviet master outside his own country. Botvinnik challenged Levenfish, writing that Krylenko, angered by Botvinnik's absence from the tournament, ordered the match. however, in 1952 he tied with Mark Taimanov and won the play-off match. According to Botvinnik, Alekhine was most interested in playing an opponent who could raise the funds. In Botvinnik's opinion, Alekhine was partly motivated by the desire for a reconciliation with the Soviet authorities, so that he could again visit his homeland. The match, including funding, was authorised at the highest Soviet political level in January 1939; however, a letter of confirmation was only sent two months later – in Botvinnik's opinion, because of opposition by his Soviet rivals, especially those who had become prominent before the Russian Revolution

Botvinnik took an early lead in the 1940 USSR Championship, but faded badly in the later stages, eventually sharing fifth place. He attributed this to the unaccustomed difficulty of concentrating in a party-like atmosphere filled with noise and tobacco smoke. Botvinnik wrote to a friendly official, commenting that the champion was to be the winner of a match between Igor Bondarevsky and Andor Lilienthal, who had tied for first place, but had no achievements in international competition. The official's efforts led to a tournament for the title of "Absolute Champion of the USSR", whose official aim was to identify a Soviet challenger for Alekhine's title. The contestants were the top six finishers in the Soviet Championship – Bondarevsky, Lilienthal, Paul Keres (whose home country, Estonia, had recently been annexed by the Soviet Union), future World Champion Vasily Smyslov, Isaac Boleslavsky and Botvinnik – who were to play a quadruple round-robin. Botvinnik's preparation with his second, Viacheslav Ragozin, included training matches in noisy, smoky rooms and he slept in the playing room, without opening the window. He won the tournament, 2½ points ahead of Keres and three ahead of Smyslov; moreover, with plus scores in the "mini-matches" against all his rivals.

In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Botvinnik's wife Gayane, a ballerina, told him that her colleagues at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre were being evacuated to the city of Perm, The family found an apartment there, and Botvinnik obtained a job with the local electricity supply organization – at the lowest pay rate and on condition that he did no research, as he had only a Candidate's degree. Botvinnik's only child, a daughter named Olya, was born in Perm in April 1942.

In the evenings, Botvinnik wrote a book in which he annotated all the games of the "Absolute Championship of the USSR", in order to maintain his analytic skills in readiness for a match with Alekhine. His work included wood-cutting for fuel, which left him with insufficient energy for chess analysis. Botvinnik obtained from Molotov an order that he should be given three days off normal work in order to study chess. Chessbase regards this as one of the fifty strongest tournaments between 1851 and 1986.

Shortly afterwards, Botvinnik was urged to return to Moscow by the People's Commissar for Power Stations, an admirer and subsequent good friend. On his return, Botvinnik suggested a match with Samuel Reshevsky in order to strengthen his claim for a title match with Alekhine, but this received no political support. In December 1943, he won the Moscow Championship, ahead of Smyslov. At the same time, opposition to his plan for a match with Alekhine re-surfaced, on the grounds that Alekhine was a political enemy and the only proper course was to demand that he be stripped of the title. The dispute ended in Botvinnik's favor, and in the dismissal of a senior chess official, one of those to have opposed Botvinnik's plan, who was also a KGB colonel.

After Botvinnik won the 1944 and 1945 Soviet championships, most top Soviet players supported his desire for a World Championship match with Alekhine. However, the allegations that Alekhine had written anti-Semitic articles while in Nazi-occupied France made it difficult to host the match in the USSR. Botvinnik opened negotiations with the British Chess Federation to host the match in England, but these were cut short by Alekhine's death in 1946. He and Euwe both struggled in the last few rounds, and Botvinnik had a narrow escape against Euwe, who he acknowledged had always been a difficult opponent for him. This was Botvinnik's first outright victory in a tournament outside the Soviet Union.

Botvinnik also won the very strong Mikhail Chigorin Memorial tournament held at Moscow 1947.

World Champion Botvinnik strongly influenced the design of the system which would be used for World Championship competition from 1948 to 1963. Viktor Baturinsky wrote: "Now came Botvinnik's turn to defend his title in accordance with the new qualifying system which he himself had outlined in 1946." (This statement referred to Botvinnik's 1951 title defence.)

On the basis of his strong results during and just after World War II, Botvinnik was one of five players to contest the 1948 World Chess Championship, which was held at The Hague and Moscow. He won the 1948 tournament convincingly—with a score of 14/20, three points clear—becoming the sixth World Champion. While he was on vacation in Riga after the tournament, an eleven-year-old boy called Mikhail Tal paid a visit, hoping to play a game against the new champion. Tal was met by Botvinnik's wife, who said the champion was asleep, and that she had made him take a rest from chess. In 1950, Botvinnik was one of the inaugural recipients of the international grandmaster title from FIDE.

Botvinnik held the world title, with two brief interruptions, for the next fifteen years, during which he played seven world championship matches. In 1951, he drew with David Bronstein over 24 games in Moscow, +5−5=14, keeping the world title, but it was a struggle for Botvinnik, who won the second-last game and drew the last in order to tie the match. In 1954, he drew with Vasily Smyslov over 24 games in Moscow, +7−7=10, again retaining the title. In 1957, he lost to Smyslov by 9½–12½ in Moscow, but the rules then in force allowed him a rematch without having to go through the Candidates' Tournament, and in 1958 he won the rematch in Moscow; Smyslov said his health was poor during the return match. In 1960, Botvinnik was convincingly beaten 8½–12½ at Moscow by Tal, now 23 years old, but again exercised his right to a rematch in 1961, and won by 13–8 in Moscow. Commentators agreed that Tal's play was weaker in the rematch, probably due to his health, but also that Botvinnik's play was better than in the 1960 match, largely due to thorough preparation. Botvinnik changed his style in the rematch, avoiding the tactical complications in which Tal excelled and aiming for closed positions and endgames, where Tal's technique was not outstanding. FIDE had by then altered the rules, and he was not allowed a rematch. The rematch rule had been nicknamed the "Botvinnik rule" because he twice benefited from it.

Though ranking as formal World Champion, Botvinnik had a relatively poor playing record in the early 1950s: he played no formal competitive games after winning the 1948 match tournament until he defended his title, then struggled to draw his 1951 championship match with Bronstein, placed only fifth in the 1951 Soviet Championship, and tied for third in the 1952 Géza Maróczy Memorial tournament in Budapest; and he had also performed poorly in Soviet training contests. However, he lost only five of over thirty games in the two tournaments; three of the four who finished ahead of him in the 1951 championship were future world champions Smyslov and Petrosian and a leading world championship contender (and winner in both tournaments) Paul Keres; and he finished ahead of Petrosian and even with Smyslov in 1952. Botvinnik did not play in the Soviet team that won the 1952 Chess Olympiad in Helsinki: the players voted for the line-up and placed Botvinnik on second board, with Keres on top board; Botvinnik protested and refused to play. Keres' playing record from 1950 to early 1952 had been outstanding.

Botvinnik also played twice for the USSR in the European Team Championship. At Oberhausen 1961, he scored 6/9 for the gold medal on board one. But at Hamburg 1965, he struggled on board two with only 3½/8. Both times the Soviet Union won the team gold medals. Botvinnik played one of the final events of his career at the Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World match in Belgrade 1970, scoring 2½/4 against Milan Matulović, as the USSR narrowly triumphed.

Late career After losing the world title for the final time, to Tigran Petrosian in Moscow in 1963, Botvinnik withdrew from the following World Championship cycle after FIDE declined, at its annual congress in 1965, to grant a losing champion the automatic right to a rematch. He remained involved with competitive chess, appearing in several highly rated tournaments and continuing to produce memorable games.

Botvinnik retired from competitive play in 1970, aged 59, preferring instead to occupy himself with the development of computer chess programs and to assist with the training of younger Soviet players, earning him the nickname of "Patriarch of the Soviet Chess School" (see below).

Botvinnik's autobiography, K Dostizheniyu Tseli, was published in Russian in 1978, and in English translation as Achieving the Aim in 1981. A staunch Communist, he was noticeably shaken by the collapse of the Soviet Union and lost some of his standing in Russian chess during the Boris Yeltsin era.

In the 1980s, Botvinnik proposed a computer program to manage the Soviet economy. However, his proposals did not receive significant attention from the Soviet government.

During the last few years of his life, Botvinnik personally financed his economic computer project that he hoped would be used to manage the Russian economy. He kept actively working on the program until his death and financing the work from the money he made for the lectures and seminars he attended, despite prominent health problems.

Botvinnik died of pancreatic cancer in May 1995. According to his daughter, Botvinnik remained active until the last few months of his life, and continued to go to work until March 1995 despite blindness in one of his eyes (and extremely poor vision in the other). He died in his Moscow apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment. His nephew recalled that Botvinnik “died fully conscious, with the greatest courage and dignity, and on the eve of his death gave his relatives detailed instructions on how the funeral should be organized.” For this reason, no memorial service was held, and among prominent chess players only Smyslov attended the funeral. In accordance with Botvinnik’s will, his body was cremated, and the urn was interred in the columbarium of Novodevichy Cemetery next to the burial place of his wife, the ballerina Gayane Davidovna Ananova.

Political controversies The Soviet Union regarded chess as a symbol of Communist superiority, and hence the Soviet chess league was extremely politicized. As Botvinnik was the first world-class player produced by the Soviet Union, everything he said or did (or did not say or do) had political repercussions, and there were rumors that Soviet opponents were given hints that they should not beat him.

David Bronstein wrote that Boris Verlinsky had won the 1929 Soviet Championship and was granted the first Soviet Grandmaster title for this achievement, yet he was later stripped of it, when it was thought more politically correct to make Botvinnik the first official Soviet GM (as distinct from the then-nonexistent FIDE grandmaster title). The game was drawn, and Botvinnik shared first place with Salo Flohr.

Botvinnik sent an effusive telegram of thanks to Joseph Stalin after his victory at the great tournament in Nottingham in 1936.

Botvinnik played relatively poorly in the very strong 1940 Soviet Championship, finishing in a tie for fifth/sixth places, with 11½/19, two full points behind Igor Bondarevsky and Andor Lilienthal. With World War II under way by this time, and the strong possibility of little or no chess practice for some time in the future, Botvinnik seems to have prevailed upon the Soviet chess leadership to hold another tournament "in order to clarify the situation". This wound up being the 1941 Absolute Championship of the USSR, which featured the top six finishers from the 1940 event, playing each other four times. After a personal appeal to the defence minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, Botvinnik was exempted from war work for three days a week in order to concentrate on chess preparations. He won this tournament convincingly, and thus reclaimed his position as the USSR's top player.

Bronstein claimed that at the end of the 1946 Groningen tournament, a few months after the death of reigning world champion Alexander Alekhine, Botvinnik personally invited Samuel Reshevsky, Reuben Fine, Max Euwe, Vasily Smyslov, and Paul Keres to join him in a tournament to decide the new world champion,

Bronstein insinuated that Soviet officials pressured him to lose in the 1951 world championship match so that Botvinnik would keep the title,

In 1956, FIDE changed the world championship rules so that a defeated champion would have the right to a return match. Yuri Averbakh alleged that this was done at the urging of the two Soviet representatives in FIDE, who were personal friends of Botvinnik. Averbakh also claims that Botvinnik's friends were behind FIDE's decision in 1956 to limit the number of players from the same country that could compete in the Candidates Tournament, and that this was to Botvinnik's advantage as it reduced the number of Soviet players he might have to meet in the title match.

Botvinnik asked to be allowed to play in the 1956 Candidates Tournament, as he wanted to use the event as part of his warm-up for the next year's title match, but his request was refused.

Mikhail Tal's chronic kidney problems contributed to his defeat in his 1961 return match with Botvinnik, and his doctors in Riga advised that he should postpone the match for health reasons. Averbakh claimed that Botvinnik would agree to a postponement only if Tal was certified unfit by Moscow doctors, and that Tal then decided to play.

In 1976, Soviet grandmasters were asked to sign a letter condemning Viktor Korchnoi as a "traitor" after Korchnoi defected. Botvinnik evaded this "request" by saying that he wanted to write his own letter denouncing Korchnoi. By this time, however, his importance had waned and officials would not give him this "privilege", so Botvinnik's name did not appear on the group letter – an outcome Botvinnik may have foreseen. Bronstein and Boris Spassky openly refused to sign the letter.

Assessment

Playing strength and style

Reuben Fine, writing in 1976, observed that Botvinnik was at or near the top of the chess world for thirty years—from 1933, when he drew a match against Flohr, to 1963, when he lost the world championship for the final time, to Petrosian—"a feat equaled historically only by Emanuel Lasker and Wilhelm Steinitz". The statistical rating system used in Raymond Keene and Nathan Divinsky's book Warriors of the Mind concludes that Botvinnik was the fourth strongest player of all time: behind Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and Bobby Fischer but ahead of José Raúl Capablanca, Lasker, Viktor Korchnoi, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov and Tigran Petrosian. The Chessmetrics system is sensitive to the length of the periods being compared but places Botvinnik third in a comparison of players' best individual years (1946 for Botvinnik) and sixth in a comparison of fifteen-year periods (1935–1949 in Botvinnik's case). In 2005, Chessmetrics' creator Jeff Sonas wrote an article which examined various ways of comparing the strength of "world number one" players, some not based on Chessmetrics; and Botvinnik generally emerged as one of the top six (the greatest exceptions were in criteria related to tournament results). FIDE did not adopt the Elo rating system until 1970, by which time Botvinnik's strength had been declining for several years. According to unofficial calculations by Arpad Elo, Botvinnik was the highest-rated player from 1937 to 1954, peaking about 2730 in 1946.

This may seem surprising in the light of Botvinnik's results in the 1950s and early 1960s, when he failed to win a world championship match outright (as reigning champion) and his tournament results were patchy. But after the FIDE world championship cycle was established in 1948, reigning champions had to play the strongest contender every three years, and successful title defenses became less common than in the pre-World War II years, when the titleholder could select his challenger. Despite this, Botvinnik held the world title for a longer period than any of his successors except Garry Kasparov. Botvinnik also became world champion at the relatively late age of 37, because World War II brought international competition to a virtual halt for six years; and he was 52 years old when he finally lost his title (only Wilhelm Steinitz and Emanuel Lasker were older when they were defeated). Botvinnik's best years were from 1935 to 1946; and the USSR's 15½–4½ win in the 1945 radio match against the US proved that the USSR's top players were considerably better than those from the US (who had dominated international team competitions in the 1930s).

Botvinnik generally sought tense positions with chances for both sides; hence his results were often better with the Black pieces as he could avoid lines that were likely to produce draws. He confessed that he was relatively weak in tactical calculation, yet many of his games feature sacrifices – often long-term positional sacrifices whose purpose was not to force an immediate win, but to improve his position and undermine his opponent's. Botvinnik was also capable of all-out sacrificial attacks when he thought the position justified it. Botvinnik saw himself as a "universal player" (all-rounder), in contrast to an all-out attacker like Mikhail Tal or a defender like Tigran Petrosian. Botvinnik also played many short training matches against strong grandmasters including Salo Flohr, Yuri Averbakh, Viacheslav Ragozin, and Semion Furman – in noisy or smoky rooms if he thought he would have to face such conditions in actual competition. Vladimir Kramnik said, "Botvinnik's chess career was the way of a genius, although he was not a genius", meaning that Botvinnik was brilliant at making the best use of his talents.

Botvinnik used almost exclusively pawn openings with the white pieces. In his eight World Championship matches, he never started a game with an e4-opening, and his usual choices as White were the English Opening or Queen's Gambit. When playing the black pieces, he preferred the French Defense or Sicilian Defense in response to 1.e4, and the Slav Defense or Nimzo-Indian Defence in response to 1.d4. While Botvinnik did not use a wide range of openings, he made major contributions to those he did use, for example: the Botvinnik Variation of the Semi-Slav Defense in the Queen's Gambit Declined, the Kasparov/Botvinnik system in the Exchange Variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined, the Caro–Kann Defence (both the Panov–Botvinnik Attack for White and various approaches for Black), the Winawer Variation of the French Defense, the Botvinnik System in the English Opening. In his openings research Botvinnik did not aim to produce tactical tricks that would only be effective once, but rather systems in which he aimed to understand typical positions and their possibilities better than his rivals. His advice to his pupils included "My theory of the openings fitted into one notebook" and "You don't have to know that which everyone knows, but it is important to know that which not everyone knows." In fact he used different notebooks in different periods, and copied a few analyses from one notebook to the next. The "Soviet School of Chess" that dominated competition from 1945 to about 2000 followed Botvinnik's approach to preparation and to openings research; and, although Soviet players had their own preferred styles of play, they adopted his combative approach and willingness to ignore "classical" principles if doing so offered credible prospects of a lasting advantage.

In 1963, Botvinnik founded his own school within the Soviet coaching system, and its graduates include world champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, and other top-class players such as Alexei Shirov, Vladimir Akopian and Jaan Ehlvest. Botvinnik was not an infallible spotter of chess talent: although he said of the 11-year-old Kasparov, "The future of chess lies in the hands of this young man", he said on first seeing Karpov, "The boy doesn't have a clue about chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession." But Karpov recounts fondly his youthful memories of the Botvinnik school and credits Botvinnik's training, especially the homework he assigned, with a marked improvement in his own play. Kasparov presents Botvinnik almost as a kind of father figure, going some way towards balancing the common public perception of Botvinnik as dour and aloof; and Kasparov inherited Botvinnik's emphasis on preparation, research and innovation. Botvinnik was still playing a major teaching role in his late 70s, when Kramnik entered the school, and made a favorable impression on his pupil.

Other achievements

Electrical engineering Engineering was as much of a passion for Botvinnik as chess – at Nottingham in 1936, where he had his first major tournament win outside the USSR, he said "I wish I could do what he's done in electrical engineering" (referring to Milan Vidmar, another grandmaster). In 1956, he joined the Research Institute for Electrical Energy as a senior research scientist. In 1960 he published a book on Asynchronized Synchronous Machines

Computer chess In the 1950s Botvinnik became interested in computers, at first mainly for playing computer chess but he later also co-authored reports on the possible use of artificial intelligence in managing the Soviet economy. Botvinnik's research on chess-playing programs concentrated on "selective searches", which used general chess principles to decide which moves were worth considering. This was the only feasible approach for the primitive computers available in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, which were only capable of searching three or four half-moves deep (i.e. A's move, B's move, A's move, B's move) if they tried to examine every variation. Botvinnik eventually developed an algorithm that was reasonably good at finding the right move in difficult positions, but it often missed the right move in simple positions, e.g. where it was possible to checkmate in two moves. This "selective" approach turned out to be a dead end, as computers were powerful enough by the mid-1970s to perform a brute-force search (checking all possible moves) several moves deep and today's vastly more powerful computers do this well enough to beat human world champions. However, his PIONEER program contained a generalized method of decision-making that, with a few adjustments, enabled it to plan maintenance of power stations all over the USSR. On September 7, 1991, Botvinnik was awarded an honorary degree in mathematics of the University of Ferrara (Italy) for his work on computer chess.

Writings

Chess .

Computers

Tournament results The following table gives Botvinnik's placings and scores in tournaments. The first "Score" column gives the number of points on the total possible. In the second "Score" column, "+" indicates the number of won games, "−" the number of losses, and "=" the number of draws.

Botvinnik estimates "about 10th out of 16". At first sight Botvinnik's opening play looks unpromising, but he knew how his attack would develop. Keres vs. Botvinnik, USSR Absolute Championship 1941, Nimzoindian Defense, 0–1 Playing as Black, Botvinnik demolishes a world title contender in 22 moves. Tolush vs. Botvinnik, USSR Championship 1944, 0–1 Long-term . Denker vs. Botvinnik, US vs USSR radio match 1945, 0–1 Botvinnik uses the Botvinnik System in the Semi-Slav Defense to bulldoze US champion Arnold Denker. Botvinnik vs. Keres, Alekhine Memorial Tournament Moscow 1966, 1–0 Botvinnik shows his superior understanding of , and when to open them. Botvinnik vs Portisch, Monaco 1968, 1–0 A fireworks display starting with an exchange sacrifice on the c-file, a tactic on which Botvinnik wrote the book.