Mikhail Botvinnik, who would have been 100 years old today. Botvinnik was the 6th modern world chess champion, and had quite a long career at or around the top level. In addition to being the world champion for most of the years between 1948 and 1963, he competed very successfully in the 30s, against the likes of Capablanca, Alekhine, and Lasker; yet he also played Fischer. He won the Soviet championship as early as 1931, and as late as 1952. In the quintuple round robin tournament to decide the world champion after Alekhine's death, Botvinnik scored 70% (14-6), 3 clear points ahead of the field, and won his mini-match against each other opponent. He played in 6 Olympiads, winning 5 medals. He is considered the father of Soviet chess, and his scientific approach and discoveries profoundly influenced probably every Soviet grandmaster who came after him. He made numerous contributions to opening theory. He was also a Doctor of Electrical Engineering, and a pioneer in the field of computer chess.

Google hosed him.

Missed it completely. Happy birthday Mikhail!

Botvinnik lost the world title to Tal in 1960 (he regained it from him in 1961), and Tal wrote an outstanding book on the match. One of the most interesting parts of the Tal book was his explanation of how their thinking differed so fundamentally. Tal basically thought like a computer - he was a calculator...a cruncher of variations. While all top grandmasters have excellent calculating ability, Botvinnik was more of a big picture strategist.

So after one of the games, they stayed at the board analyzing, and Tal was showing him this line that went into a long combination, and Tal was talking about all of the sub-variations that he had calculated, and Botvinnik said something like, "Yes, that line looked risky for white, but then I saw that if I traded the dark-squared bishops and kept my rooks on the queen file, the position could be held." Tal (who was very young at the time; in fact, by winning the match, he became the youngest world champion ever) was flabbergasted (and a little affronted) that Botvinnik was talking about the position in such general terms after he (Tal) had spent so much time going into great detail about the variations; however, as he reconciled Botvinnik's comments with the variations that he (Tal) had calculated, he realized that Botvinnik was right, and they had reached the same conclusion by radically different means - Tal avoided the line because he had calculated that Botvinnik could draw in the variation where the dark squared-bishops got traded and Botvinnik held the d-file (queen file) with his rooks.

Is there a biography of M-Bot available?

His "Achieving the Aim" is very good. "Half a Century of Chess" might come the closest to a(n) (auto)biography. "15 Games and Their Stories" is a good read. He also wrote books about several of his world championship matches, and probably other things, too.

I'll look them up. Thanks, Lobo!

I'm sure this is all very exciting.
The only way I'd play chess is if it was that chess where they play between boxing rounds. I'd learn to play just for that.
I'm hella good at tic tac to though.

Has anyone read "My Great Predecessors" by Kasparov. I wonder how much he has to say about Botvinnink. Regardless, I also found Achieving the Aim to be very entertaining, but perhaps a bit too self-serving.

John