Mikhail Botvinnik

**Mikhail Botvinnik** (; 17 August 1911 – 5 May 1995) was a Soviet Russian grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion.

He was an electrical engineer, one of the few chess masters who achieved distinction in another career while playing top-class competitive chess.

Botvinnik was the first world-class player to develop within the Soviet Union. This put him under some political pressure, but also gave him considerable influence within Soviet chess. He played a major role in the design of the World Chess Championship system after World War II. After his retirement as a player he coached a few select pupils. They included three future World Champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik.

## Life & career 
### Early years 
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik was born near St. Petersburg into a Jewish family. His father was a dental technician, and a cantor (*hazzan*) in the local synagogue. His mother was a dentist, which allowed the family to live outside the Pale of Settlement to which most Jews in Russia were restricted at the time. As a result, Mikhail Botvinnik grew up in Saint Petersburg's Nevsky Prospekt.

### Soviet champion 
In 1931, at the age of 20, Botvinnik won his first Soviet Championship in Moscow, scoring 13½ out of 17.

Botvinnik came first equal with Flohr, ½&nbsp;point ahead of Lasker and one&nbsp;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. In 1945 he dominated the tournament, scoring 15/17;  in 1952 he tied with Mark Taimanov and won the play-off match.

On the basis of his strong results during and just after World War II, Botvinnik was one of five players to contest the World Chess Championship 1948, which was held at The Hague and Moscow. He won the tournament convincingly, with a score of 14/20, three points clear, becoming the sixth World Champion. Botvinnik then held the title, with two brief interruptions, for the next fifteen years, during which he played seven world championship matches.

Botvinnik played no formal competitive games after winning the 1948 match tournament until he defended his title. In 1951, he drew with David Bronstein over 24 games in Moscow, +5 =14 -5, keeping the world title. He struggled to draw this match with Bronstein, and had (by his standards) weak tournament results. 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. 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&nbsp;years old, but again exercised his right to a rematch in 1961, and won by 13–8 in Moscow. Botvinnik's play was better than in the 1960 match, mainly 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 so outstanding. Also, Tal's health was variable. Finally, in 1963, he lost the title to Tigran Petrosian, by 9½-12½ in Moscow. FIDE had by then changed the rules, and he was not allowed a rematch. The rematch rule had been nicknamed the "Botvinnik rule", because he twice benefited from it.

### Later life 
In 1970, Botvinnik retired from competitive chess, and he worked on chess-playing software. There was no significant result from this, but his work as a coach to top young players bore fruit. He died of pancreatic cancer in Moscow.

## References