Alexei Shirov

◇A boy in Tal's smoke

Shirov was born into a Russian family in Riga on 4 July 1972. In Fire on Board (1997, p. 12), he recalled that his elder brother taught him the rules when he was four or five, but he forgot them. His brother tried again after Shirov took up checkers, and this time chess held his interest. He began playing in March 1979 and entered the chess school that May, studying with Viya Rozhlapa. He also read about other countries and hoped that chess would let him travel the world.

Alexander Koblents's books and Tal's games shaped his early interest in tactics. At the end of 1986 he began working with Vladimir Bagirov, a change he called a turning point in his progress (Fire on Board, pp. 10, 16). Tal was impressed by Shirov's game against Valery Zhuravlev in October 1983, and they met a few weeks later. Shirov recalled: “I was still too weak to understand his chess ideas at that time but I remember being covered in smoke (approximately ten cigarettes an hour).” His account is on p. 14; the Russian Chess Federation's profile also reports Tal's remark, “This boy already calculates better than I do!”

He became World Under-16 Champion in 1988, received the Grandmaster title in May 1990 at seventeen, and finished runner-up at the 1990 World Junior Championship (Fire on Board, pp. 19, 24). In January 1994 he stood second on the FIDE list behind Anatoly Karpov, level on 2715 with Viswanathan Anand. Garry Kasparov, whose rating was higher, was excluded from that list following the split in the world championship.

◇Fire on Board

Shirov's reputation rests on sharp attacks, unusual material balances and long calculation. His own assessment in the introduction to Fire on Board gives equal weight to another part of his play: “In fact I believe that the endgame is my strongest area, perhaps because I am a player with a very concrete style.” He credited Bagirov and his own study with developing his strategic understanding. The book ends with a selection of endgames alongside its chapter on the Botvinnik Variation of the Semi-Slav.

His preferences changed as he reviewed his games. Revisiting his 1997 win over Artur Yusupov six years later, he wrote that he would now choose the favorable endgame rather than the complications he had preferred at the time. He compared this change with Tal's evolution as a player (Fuego en el tablero II, game 4, p. 35).

The first volume appeared in 1997, followed by Fire on Board, Part II in English in 2005; the Spanish sequel, Fuego en el tablero II, had appeared in 2004. Shirov wrote that Tal's earlier book Into the line of fire! influenced his title. His notes to the 1991 win over Nikolai Nikolenko connect the two books (Fire on Board, game 32, p. 76). He chose memorable games, including draws and losses, and returned to old analysis to correct mistakes.

Writing the first book took longer than he had planned. He accepted Cadogan's proposal in March 1994 and promised a manuscript by the end of that year, while maintaining a full tournament schedule and adjusting to the birth of his daughter in November. Then his laptop was stolen in January 1995. He had no backup and lost much of the manuscript. He rebuilt it from magazine annotations and fresh analysis, eventually including games through 1996 (Fire on Board, introduction, p. 10).

◇The challenger who never got his match

In May and June 1998, at Cazorla in Spain, Shirov played Vladimir Kramnik to decide who would challenge Garry Kasparov for the classical world title. The match was scheduled for ten games, but Shirov's second win, in game nine, settled it at 5½–3½ (+2 −0 =7). In Fuego en el tablero II (2004, pp. 15–16), he explained that he had chosen a quiet eighth game to conserve his energy, then won the ninth, making a tenth game unnecessary.

Shirov wrote that he received no prize money for winning the Kramnik match; the reward was a place in a proposed title contest with a two-million-dollar purse (Fuego en el tablero II, p. 16). That match never took place because the financial backing fell through. Kasparov instead defended against Kramnik in London in 2000. Shirov reached the final of the separate FIDE knockout championship that year, where Viswanathan Anand beat him 3½–½.

◇47...Bh3

Against Veselin Topalov at Linares in 1998, Shirov reached an opposite-colored-bishop endgame with two extra pawns. In Fuego en el tablero II (pp. 9–11), he explained that the ordinary continuations led to a draw. His 47...Bh3 offered the bishop to gain the tempo his king needed to reach e4 before White's king reached e3. Topalov accepted, but Shirov's king and passed pawns won. While searching for the idea he remembered a bishop sacrifice that Ulf Andersson had used against him nearly seven years earlier. John Emms later ranked 47...Bh3 first in The Most Amazing Chess Moves of All Time.

It was not an isolated miracle. Shirov won strong events across three decades — Biel 1991, Monte Carlo (Amber) 1998, the M-Tel Masters at Sofia in 2009 — and remained, year after year, the player his peers least wanted to face when the position turned wild.

◇The keeper of the flame

His life carried the same restlessness as his chess. He changed federations more than once — Latvian, then Spanish from 1995, Latvian again, Spanish again — and made his homes in Tarragona and Riga. He married three times, including to the Lithuanian grandmaster Viktorija Čmilytė.

Into his fifties he continued to compete, winning the 2023 Canadian Open with 8½/10. His books preserve his approach to the game: concrete analysis, a willingness to revisit errors and an interest in positions that demand unusual solutions.