Honorary Emeritus Grandmaster
Which title was conferred to Vladimir Alatortsev in 1983?
Vladimir Alatortsev Vladimir Alexeyevich Alatortsev ( , pronounced a LAH tart sev ; 14 May 1909 – 13 January 1987 ) was a Soviet chess player , author , and administrator . During his career , he became champion of both Leningrad and Moscow , and played in the Soviet Chess Championship finals nine times , with his best competitive results in the 1930s . He placed clear second in the 1933 Soviet final . He retired from most competitive play in the early 1950s , moving into roles as a chess organizer , teacher , and coach . He served as chairman of the All-Union chess section from 1954 to 1959 and as chairman of the USSR Chess Federation from 1959 to 1961 . By profession , he was a hydraulics engineer . Early years , peaks pre-war . Alatortsev was an early Leningrad chess rival of Mikhail Botvinnik , who later became World Champion . However , Botvinnik , who was two years younger , established complete dominance over Alatortsev right from the start , and wound up with a 9-0 lifetime won-loss score with two games drawn . Alatortsevs first important high-level result was a shared 3rd-6th place in the Soviet Championship , Moscow 1931 , with a score of 10 points out of 17 ; Botvinnik won . Alatortsev was again runner-up to Botvinnik in the 1932 Leningrad Championship with 7/11 . Alatortsev made his best Soviet Championship result in 1933 at Leningrad ( URS-ch08 ) , when he placed clear second with 13/19 , as Botvinnik won his second title . At Tbilisi 1933 , he tied for 1st-2nd places with Viktor Goglidze at 10/14 . He shared the Leningrad title in 1933–34 with Georgy Lisitsin on 11/15 . In the 1934 Leningrad International Alatortsev scored 4½/11 , as Botvinnik won to continue his dominance , and scored 7/13 in the Leningrad National tournament in May 1934 for 8th place , as Ilya Rabinovich won . In the 1934 Soviet Championship at Leningrad , he scored 10½/19 for a tied 5th-8th place ; Grigory Levenfish and Ilya Rabinovich won . He earned a place in the 1935 Moscow International tournament , the strongest Soviet event since 1925 , and finished with a even score of 9½ /19 , as Botvinnik and Salo Flohr won . Alatortsev drew a 12-game match ( +4 =4 −4 ) with the Hungarian Andor Lilienthal in 1935 . He was jointly champion of Moscow in both 1936 and 1937 . Then in the 1937 Soviet Championship at Tbilisi , Alatortsev made 9½/19 to tie 10th-12th places . Alatortsev posted his second best pre-war result when he tied for 1st-2nd places with Leonid Shamaev in a strong tournament at Leningrad 1938 , with 14/21 , ahead of Lilienthal and Viacheslav Ragozin . Chessmetrics.com ranks this as a 2684 performance . In the Leningrad-Moscow tournament of 1939 , Alatortsev tied for 9th-10th places on 9/17 , as Flohr won . He had to qualify for the next Soviet final , and in the semi-final at Kiev 1940 , he scored 9½/16 to tie for 4th-7th places , but did not advance to the final , losing out on tiebreak . Chessmetrics ranks him as #21 in the world for August 1940 , with a rating of 2626 . War years . With the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 , organized chess was put to a stop for the next several years ; but Alatortsevs solid pre-war results earned him an invitation to a strong event at Kuibyshev 1942 . He made 6½/11 for seventh place , as Isaac Boleslavsky won . He then scored 7/15 at the 1942 Moscow Championship . Post-war form drops . With the Nazi invaders in full retreat by 1944 , organized chess slowly got going again in the Soviet Union . Alatortsev struggled in the 1944 Soviet Championship at Moscow with just 5½/16 for 16th place , as Botvinnik won . He had to return to qualifying for the next Soviet final , and made it through at Moscow in the semi-final with 10½/15 to tie for 2nd-4th places , as David Bronstein won . In the final that same year in Moscow , he scored just 7½/17 , as Botvinnik dominated the field . Alatortsev played the 1945 Latvian Championship at Riga , and won the tournament ( but not the title ; he was playing hors concours ) . He scored 8½/15 in the 1946 Moscow Championship to tie for 4th-5th places , as Bronstein won again . He was below 50 per cent for the next two Soviet finals as well ; in the Soviet Championship at Leningrad 1947 , he made 7½/19 , as Paul Keres won , and then in the next edition at Moscow 1948 , he finished well down with 7½/18 , as Bronstein and Alexander Kotov won . Alatortsev qualified successfully through the semi-final at Moscow 1949 with 9½/16 , and then he played his last Soviet Championship final at Moscow 1950 , scoring 9/17 to tie for 7th-10th places , as Keres won . Coach , organizer , author . It was clear that the new generation of Soviet players was taking over the top places in tournaments . Players such as Alexander Kotov , Isaac Boleslavsky , David Bronstein , Efim Geller , Yuri Averbakh , Tigran Petrosian , and Mark Taimanov were all younger and had the benefits of organized Soviet training , so they surpassed the older generation in their achievements . Alatortsev moved into a training role in the late 1940s , assisting the rising star Vasily Smyslov . He also became involved in tournament organization and administration . Alatortsev was awarded the title International Master by FIDE , the World Chess Federation , in 1950 , when this title was introduced officially . Alatortsev stopped playing major tournaments in the early 1950s , but occasionally took part in lesser events . He served as head of the Soviet Chess Federation from 1954 to 1961 , during a time when there were about three million registered Soviet players . From 1943 to 1974 , he was the editor of a chess column in the newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva . In 1960 , he published the book Modern Chess Theory . His final strong tournament was Tbilisi 1965 , where at age 56 he made 8/17 . Alatortsev never got the opportunity to compete outside the Soviet Union . He was awarded the Honorary Emeritus Grandmaster title by FIDE in 1983 . Alatortsev died at age 77 , on 13 January 1987 in Moscow . In the ECO database , the D31 line of the Queens Gambit Declined is named for Alatortsev . External links . - Vladimir Alatortsev games at 365Chess.com