Vladimir Savon

Vladimir Andreyevich Savon (; 26 September 1940 – 1 June 2005) was a Ukrainian chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 1973.

Savon shared the Ukrainian Chess Championship in 1969 and won the USSR Championship in 1971. He competed in the 1972 Chess Olympiad.

Biography Born in Chernihiv, he learned how to play at the age of 13.

Savon competed in the Soviet championship eleven times, from 1961 (at age 21) to the last championship in 1991. His best result was his first place in the 1971 championship with an undefeated 15/21. Only an international master, he finished 1.5 points ahead of former world champions Mikhail Tal and Vasily Smyslov. Future world champion Anatoly Karpov finished another half point back. Taimanov and Bernard Cafferty, in their book on the Soviet championships, described Savon's win "the least plausible result for decades".

He did, however, achieve other good results in international competition; at Debrecen in 1970 (1st= with Bilek), at Sukhumi 1972 (2nd after Tal), at Vilnius 1975 (1st=), at Portorož 1977 (2nd= with Hort, after Larsen) and at Kyiv 1978 (2nd=).

FIDE awarded Savon the International Master title in 1967, and the International Grandmaster title in 1973. In the latter year, he finished eighth out of 18 at the Petropolis Interzonal. He shared the title of Ukrainian Champion with Gennady Kuzmin in 1969. In 1980 while at a chess tournament at Dnepropetrovsk, Savon suffered a serious head injury. It has led to a significant decline in his playing strength.

He died in Kharkiv at the age of 65.

Notable games

From the 39th USSR Championship 1971, rd. 13, Savon-Roman Dzindzichashvili

From Leningrad 1971, Yuri Balashov-Savon