Eugene Vasiukov (1933 – 2018)

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  • Eugene Vasiukov (1933 – 2018)

    Eugene Vasiukov (1933 – 2018)

    May 10, 2018

    Evgeni Andreyevich Vasiukov was born March 5, 1933 in Moscow, USSR. Awarded the IM title in 1958 and the GM title in 1961, he was Moscow Champion in 1955, 1958, 1960, 1962 (jointly), 1972 and 1978. His best tournament result was 1st in 1974 at Manila. He won the 1995 World Senior Chess Championship. Vasiukov was also a FIDE Senior Trainer. [chessgames.com]

    From chess-news.ru:

    He was called, after Alekhine, "the most outstanding Russian combination player”.

    Evgeni Vasiukov, grandmaster, passed away at 85.

    A brief biography from the Russian Chess Federation website:

    Born in Moscow, he learned to play chess at age fifteen. During the war, the eight-year child survived the evacuation of the Tula region. In 1943, in the battles his father died on the Kursk Bulge.

    "Already in 1954, he became the master of sports of the USSR, and in 1961 - International Grandmaster. His first significant success achieved in 1955, was becoming the champion of Moscow, where he proved himself a great tactician. He later won the championship of the capital another five times and played for the team in Moscow. in a variety of all-union tournaments.

    Vasiukov was always distinguished by his speed of thought, even in his fifties, he had a reputation as a specialist on the blitz. He won six times the Moscow Blitz Championship for the prizes of "Vyachorka" and twice shared the first place. Back in 1958, when 15-year-old Robert Fischer briefly came to Moscow, it was Vasiukov who defended the honor of the capital in blitz and who urgently invited to TSSHK, Tigran Petrosian.

    Four years later, the Vasiukov "tripped" Fischer. It happened in the tournament contenders for the island of Curacao. Vasiukov, original analyst and theorist, had prepared a new idea to protect Korchnoi in the Ufimstev (Pirc) and introduced an innovation. Viktor applied it to the black game against Fischer and won a very important, a spectacular victory.

    Vasiukov generously shared ideas, being a student, and the Soviet national team coach of the Olympic team, Consultant-Trainer to Karpov, Korchnoi, Tal Geller and other outstanding players.

    He won more than 50 competitions, 11 times participated in the championships of the USSR. His best result was the victory in Manila in 1974 - ahead of Petrosian, Larsen, Portisch, Gligoric ... He won first place in tournaments in Reykjavik, Athens, Varna, Berlin and other cities. "

    Until recently, Eugene Vasiukov remained an active chess player, participating in the veterans' tournament in the Russian team. Fifteen recent years led the most successful and perhaps the only real working committee of the Russian Chess Federation - Veterans Commission.

    Developed handicap tournament system in which the player of any level always has a chance to compete with the strongest grandmasters. Competitions are held regularly in recent years and enjoyed success.

    Eugene was a plain-speaker and did not hesitate to express his own opinion, even (and especially) if it went against the "majority opinion".

    On the day of the 80th anniversary of Victor Korchnoi in an interview on our site Vasiukov said: "Now a lot of people who do not know the inside of many situations presented:" Oh, what a hero Korchnoi "I do not hold this position ...." (Vasiukov remarks in another interview that Korchnoi stamped on his family by his defection).

    Most recently, in September last year he won another Moscow Blitz Championship. At the award ceremony, he received the gold medal and the veteran took the microphone and said that "Gorbushkin yard" – was the worst possible room for such tournaments. This year, the Russian team won the World Cup, European Championship, and recently I got the third medal in the individual championship of Europe (European Senior in 2016 without losing a game). The first two results were remarked by the president. At the world championships, our team won all the matches, we did not lose a single game, the participants took five first places on the boards. Neither during these tournaments, nor when they were over did I get a call from the Moscow Chess Federation to congratulate me or say some kind words.
    ______

    I believe that there are two books with contributions by Vasiukov:

    Mikhail Chigorin, 1972, Fiskultura i sport by Vasiukov, Narkevic and Nikitin

    Paris, Elista, Yerevan – the world chess championship 1996, Karpov-Kamsky by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov with commentary by Evgeny Vasiukov
    ______

    There is a full Wikipedia biography at:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeni_Vasiukov
    ________

    Curacao Candidates 1962
    Willemstad, Curacao
    Fischer, Robert – Korchnoi, Viktor
    B09 Pirc, Austrian Attack

    1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.f4 Bg7 5.Nf3 O-O 6.Be2 c5 7.dxc5 Qa5 8.O-O Qxc5+ 9.Kh1 Nc6 10.Nd2 a5 11.Nb3 Qb6 12.a4 Nb4 13.g4 Bxg4 14.Bxg4 Nxg4 15.Qxg4 Nxc2 16.Nb5 Nxa1 17.Nxa1 Qc6 18.f5 Qc4 19.Qf3 Qxa4 20.Nc7 Qxa1 21.Nd5 Rae8 22.Bg5 Qxb2 23.Bxe7 Be5 24.Rf2 Qc1+ 25.Rf1 Qh6 26.h3 gxf5 27.Bxf8 Rxf8 28.Ne7+ Kh8 29.Nxf5 Qe6 30.Rg1 a4 31.Rg4 Qb3 32.Qf1 a3 33.Rg3 Qxg3 0-1

    Position in Fischer-Korchnoi after 13.g4



    Chessgames kibitzers:

    (Was 10..a5, Vasiukov’s novelty?)

    - Tremendous game! Not certain if this is in "My 60 Memorable Games"?! In any event, what an attacking masterpiece, IMHO. Victor, and Bobby, left us so much beauty and power in their respective creations on the 64 squares. I am grateful for their immense contributions. Thanks for this game, people!

    - it's actually the only game in which Fischer fell into a book trap in the opening. It's not in M60MG, no.

    - Yes, 13.g4? was Fischer's mistake. As Mednis later put it, "after that, the rest of the game is a slaughter."
    Last edited by Wayne Komer; Thursday, 10th May, 2018, 02:19 PM.

  • #2
    Re: Eugene Vasiukov (1933 – 2018)

    Eugene Vasiukov (1933 – 2018)

    May 10, 2018

    From the article by Colin McGourty in chess24.com:

    https://chess24.com/en/read/news/evg...kov-dies-at-85

    Vasiukov’s most memorable game was arguably the one he lost to Mikhail Tal in the 1964 USSR Championship


    Position in Tal-Vasiukov after 18…Ba6




    The game itself was spectacular. Tal played 19.Nxg7! here, went on to navigate the complications better, and then managed to win an opposite-coloured bishop ending only a single pawn up. The reason the game is remembered, though, is for perhaps the best move annotation ever in many people’s favourite chess book, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal:

    I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov at the USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.

    And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanović Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".

    I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chessboard, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.

    After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.

    And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice.

    USSR Championship 1964/5
    Kiev, USSR
    Round 4, Dec. 30, 1964
    Tal, Mikhail – Vasiukov, Evgeni
    B17 Caro-Kann, Petrosian-Smyslov Classical

    1.e4 c6 2.Nc3 d5 3.d4 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Nf3 Ngf6 6.Ng3 e6 7.Bd3 c5 8.O-O cxd4 9.Nxd4 Bc5 10.Nf3 O-O 11.Qe2 b6 12.Bf4 Bb7 13.Rad1 Nd5 14.Bg5 Qc7 15.Nh5 Kh8 16.Be4 f6 17.Bh4 Bd6 18.c4 Ba6 19.Nxg7 Kxg7 20.Nd4 Nc5 21.Qg4+ Kh8 22.Nxe6 Nxe6 23.Qxe6 Rae8 24.Qxd5 Bxh2+ 25.Kh1 Qf4 26.Qh5 Qxe4 27.Rfe1 Qg6 28.Qxg6 hxg6 29.Bxf6+ Kg8 30.Rxe8 Rxe8 31.Kxh2 Bxc4 32.Rd7 Re6 33.Bc3 Bxa2 34.Rxa7 Bc4 35.Kg3 Bd5 36.f3 Kf8 37.Bd4 b5 38.Kf4 Bc4 39.Kg5 Ke8 40.Ra8+ Kf7 41.Ra7+ Ke8 42.b4 Bd5 43.Ra3 Kf7 44.g4 Re2 45.Bc5 Re5+ 46.Kh6 Re6 47.Rd3 Bc6 48.Rd8 Re8 49.Rd4 Re6 50.f4 Ke8 51.Kg7 Be4 52.Bb6 Bf3 53.Rd8+ Ke7 54.Rd3 Be2 55.Bd8+ Ke8 56.Rd2 Re3 57.Bg5 Bd3 58.f5 1-0

    See:

    http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1139685

    ______

    - The poem that Mikhail Tal was thinking about during the game with Vasiukov was “The Telephone” by Cukovsky. It is a very popular children’s poem in Russia. It imagines what trouble it would be if all the animals in the zoo had your phone number: One after the other, all the animals start calling with various problems. The last one is the rhinocerous, who calls and says, “Help! The Hippopotamus has fallen into the marsh! If you don’t come and help he will drown! Hurry! It is not easy to drag a hippopotamus from a marsh!”
    Last edited by Wayne Komer; Thursday, 10th May, 2018, 10:58 PM.

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    • #3
      Re: Eugene Vasiukov (1933 – 2018)

      Eugene Vasiukov (1933 – 2018)

      May 10, 2018

      An elaboration of Fischer blitzing in Moscow from Peter Doggers, in his Vasiukov appreciation today:

      “In 1958, a 15-year-old Bobby Fischer visited Moscow for the first time. He wasn't interested in Lenin's mausoleum or Red Square, but went straight to the Central Chess Club at Gogolevsky Boulevard. There, he started beating one Soviet master after another in blitz.

      In an interview for ChessPro in 2012, Vasiukov reminisced:

      "I suddenly got a call from the chess club. I was told: 'this American child prodigy is crushing all our masters here. You must come immediately to put him in his place, and save the honor of the capital.'

      "I went to the club together with Tigran Petrosian, who was already one of the best players of the country and known as a blitz specialist. (...) Only Petrosian and I managed to compete with him. At first I was inferior to him, but then I seized the initiative, as they say, 'caught the game' and achieved a notable advantage in the score. Tigran Vartanovich also finished with a plus score.".

      When Fischer and Vasiukov met at the closing ceremony of the famous 6-0 Fischer-Taimanov match in 1971 in Vancouver (where Vasiukov was one of Taimanov's seconds), Fischer was eager to discuss with Vasiukov their blitz games of 13 years back. Taimanov later wrote that Fischer remembered a lot of them, whereas Vasiukov said that they could restore only some opening positions.

      It was in 1996 in Budapest that Vasiukov met Fischer for the last time, during the celebration of the 85th birthday of Andor Lilienthal.

      Vasiukov:

      "Of all the numerous guests of Lilienthal, who came from different countries, Fischer expressed a desire to communicate only with me, and I was, of course, very pleased. Fischer invited me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and we had a pleasant time, remembering a lot, including that first meeting at the club on Gogol Boulevard in 1958, which was the beginning of our acquaintance. It is a pity that this outstanding chess player left both chess and life too early."”

      https://www.chess.com/news/view/evge...ukov-1933-2018
      Last edited by Wayne Komer; Thursday, 10th May, 2018, 11:53 PM.

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