Furman Semyon Abramovic (01.12.1920 – 17.03.1978)

Russian Grandmaster (1966), and chess theorist.  Furman was the Honoured Trainer of USSR (1973), the trainer of Anatoly Karpov (1969-1978) and the USSR team at the Olympiad in 1974 and the European Team Championship in 1977.

Best results: Leningrad championship: 1953, 1^st; 1954, 1^st-3^rd; 1957, 1^st-2^nd; 1947,  Harrachov 1966, 1^st ahead of Mark Taimanov, Vlastimil Hort and 15 other competitors; Madrid 1973, 3^rd after Karpov and Vladimir Tukmakov and Bad Lauterberg 1977, 3^rd after Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman.  Bad Lauterberg 1977 was to be Furman’s final event.

He was much stronger than his reputation, as his life scores show: +3=3–1 (Keres), +2=3–0 (Boleslavsky), +1=3–0 (Smyslov), +2=10–2 (Bronstein), +4=11–4 (Korchnoi), +4=8–3 (Taimanov), =4 (Karpov) and +2=4–3 (Petrosian).  He did not do as well against Spassky (+1=2–5), Tal (+1=4–4), Polugaevsky (+0=3–5) and Geller (+2=4–6).

Furman was well known as a writer, theoretician and the trainer of young players, like Anatoly Karpov.  Furman also made a valuable contribution to the development of the theory of openings – Grunfeld and Nimzo-Indian Defence, Spanish Game, Queen Gambit and other openings.