Saturday, March 27, 2010

Vasily Smyslov dies March 26, 2010

(Photo taken from Golombek's Encyclopedia of Chess.) Article taken from many sources, including: Mig Greengard's Chess Ninja and The Week in Chess.

Former World Chess Champion Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov (March 24, 1921 - March 26, 2010) has died at the age of 89.

7th World Champion Vassily Smyslov passed away Friday night in the Moscow hospital where he'd been interned with heart troubles for the past several days. He turned 89 years old on March 24. A world championship level player for over 30 years, his longevity and famously brief stint as world champion usually overshadow his sheer strength. The adjective "harmonious" is attached to his name the way "brilliant" is to Tal's and "universal" to Spassky's.

Here is a game from an international tournament at Reykjavik in Iceland, 1974, in which Smyslov won first prize with some ease.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice prose, I wish I'd written that. Oh, I did.

My blog is freely available as an RSS feed, but at least credit and link.

Mig

http://chessninja.com/dailydirt

_Griphin_ said...

Did I really? Oops, I shall make the changes.