Petrosian Tigran Vartanovich (17.06.1929 – 13.08.1984)

Soviet and Armenian Grandmaster (1952), Honoured Sports Master. Ninth World Champion in 1963-1969. Editor of the chess weekly magazine 64.

Petrosian started to play chess at Tbilisi Pioneers Palace under the coaching of Ebralidze. At 16 he received the Master title and two years later, he played at the finals of the USSR Championships.
The results of the first and the second participation next year in the finals of the USSR Championships were very modest but very useful for him. Even during those years, Petrosian showed a matured positional game. The first success in 1961 came with sharing the second-third positions at the USSR Championship and receiving the right for participation in the Interzonal Tournament in Stockholm, where he was the fifth and received the Grandmaster title and the right to take part in the Candidate’s Tournament. In this contest, he took fifth place and became one of the strongest players in the world. The Grandmaster is the contestant of all the following cycles of World Championship. After the long and difficult Candidate tournament in Curacao, Petrosian was to play the title-match with the World Champion. Having played 27 rounds without any losses, Petrosyan was ahead of Keres, Fischer, Korchnoi and other strong players. The next year he played his most important match. Petrosian won the title-match with Botvinnik with the score +5-2=15. In three years the IX World Champion defended his title in the Championship match with Boris Spassky, but in 1969, he lost to Boris Spassky. Ceding the chess crown, the ex-World Champion participated in the following cycles of World Championship.

Petrosian was the winner of Interzonal Tournament at Biel (1976) and Rio de Janeiro (1979), he won also several Candidate’s Matches.

He is the winner and prize-holder of many international tournaments: four times he won the USSR championship; as a member of the USSR team he won the Olympiads nine times and European Team Championships eight times.

Petrosian’s chief strength consisted in the virtuosity which he eliminated his opponent’s attacking possibilities. Petrosian possessed a remarkable talent for spoiling the trajectories of the enemy pieces doing it without any effort, simply, intuitively. To beat him it was necessary to be excellently prepared for a theoretical point of view, to think out a complex of opening schemes that might place him in a difficult situation to force him to calculate variations. Then, he would expend too much time in energy and would limit his resources for positional maneuvering According to Smyslov, Petrosian, at his best, has penetrated deeper than anyone into the secret of positional maneuvering.

He died of cancer in 1984.

Main chess results: 

Petrosian was the winner of the 1945, 1946 USSR Junior Championships. In 1945 he was the Georgian Champion. Was the winner of the 1946 and 1948 Armenian Championships. Participated in the USSR Championships, was the first in 1959, 1961, 1969, 1975, the second in 1951, 1960, 1973, the third in 1955, 1976, the fourth in 1977. Took part in the Moscow Championships, was the first in 1951, 1956, 1968, the third in 1950. Best international results: Saltsjobaden 1952, 2^nd; Bucharest 1953, 2^nd; Neuhausen – Zurich 1953, 5^th; Goteborg 1955, 4^th; Amsterdam, 1956, 3^rd; Portoroz 1958, 3^rd; Bled 1959, 3^rd; Beverwijk 1960, 1^st; Copenhagen 1960, 1^st; Zurich 1961, 2^nd; Stockholm 1962, 2^nd; Curacao 1962, 1^st; Los Angeles 1963, 1^st; Buenos Aires 1964, 1^st; Zagreb 1965, 3^rd; Yerevan 1965, 2^nd; Venice 1967, 2^nd; Palma de Mallorca 1969, 2^nd; Wijk aan Zee 1971, 2^nd; Sarajevo 1972, 2^nd; San Antonio 1972, 1^st; Amsterdam 1973, 1^st; Las Palmas 1973, 1^st; Manila 1974, 2^nd; Milan 1975, 2^nd; Lone Pine 1976, 1^st; Biel Interzonal 1976, 2^nd; Hastings 1977-78, 2^nd; Vilnius 1979, 2^nd; Tallinn 1979, 1^st; Rio de Janeiro 1979, 1^st; Las Palma 1980, 1^st; Bar 1980, 1^st; Tilburg 1981, 2^nd.

In matches, he beat Mikhail Botvinnik – 12½ : 9½ in 1963; beat Boris Spassky – 12½ : 11½ in 1966; lost to Boris Spassky -10½ : 12½ in 1969; beat Lev Polugaevsky in 1969, beat Robert Hubner – 4 : 3 in 1971; beat Viktor Korchnoi – 5½ : 4½ in 1971; lost to Robert Fischer – 2½ : 6½ in 1971; beat Lajos Portisch – 7:6, lost to Viktor Korchnoi 1½: 3½ in 1974 and in 1980, – 5½: 6½ in 1977 and 3½: 5½ in 1980.

Between 1963-66 was chief editor of Shakhmatnaya Moskva, and between 1968-77 was chief editor of the weekly magazine64. His major works were: Chess Logic (1968), Some Problems of Logic of Chess Thought (1968).