Evgeni Vasiukov learned chess at fifteen and became a grandmaster at twenty-eight. He won the Moscow Championship six times between 1955 and 1978 and won international tournaments from Belgrade 1961 to Graested 1990, with Manila 1974, ahead of Tigran Petrosian and Bent Larsen, as the best result of his career. He beat Smyslov, Petrosian, Tal, Keres and Bronstein, worked as a second for Korchnoi, Taimanov, Geller and Karpov, and became World Senior Champion in 1995.
A late start
Vasiukov was born in Moscow on 5 March 1933. During the Second World War his family was evacuated to Tula, and his father was killed in the Battle of Kursk. He learned chess at fifteen, a late age even then. In 1954 he became a Master of Sports of the USSR and played for Moscow in the Soviet team championship final in Riga, where he beat Mark Taimanov.
In 1955 he won the Moscow Championship with 10½/15, ahead of Salo Flohr. He played twice for the Soviet Union in the World Student Team Championship, at Lyon 1955 and Uppsala 1956, scoring 5½/6 both times, and both times the team won gold. In 1956, in the Moscow Championship, he beat Tigran Petrosian.
Grandmaster
After third place at Gotha 1957, Vasiukov became an International Master in 1958, the year of his second Moscow title. In 1961 he won the Belgrade tournament ahead of Svetozar Gligorić and tied for first with Vasily Smyslov in the Moscow international tournament on 7½/11, and FIDE made him a grandmaster that year. At the USSR Championship in Baku in 1961 he tied for fourth and fifth place with 12/20, beating Paul Keres and David Bronstein. In 1962 he won at East Berlin with 11½/15, ahead of Leonid Stein.
“I suddenly got a call from the chess club. I was told: 'this American child prodigy is crushing all our masters here. You must come immediately to put him in his place, and save the honor of the capital.'”
“But then I adapted to his style of play and won by a big score.”
“He was a natural talent. OK, Mikhail Chigorin learned to play chess when he was 16, but a century years later it was quite special to become a grandmaster after learning the game at the age of 15. He was a self-made man.”
“Evgeni Andreyevich did so much for veteran chess in the USSR that we all have to bow him.”
The Soviet finals
Vasiukov played in the USSR Championship final eleven times, but Baku 1961 remained his best result there. He never finished high enough in a Soviet zonal to reach an Interzonal, and he was never chosen for the Soviet Olympiad team. He still beat leading players in the finals: Smyslov at Tbilisi in 1966 and Mikhail Tal at Alma-Ata in 1969. His highest rating was 2580, in January 1976, when he was ranked seventeenth in the world.
Tournaments in five decades
Outside the Soviet Union Vasiukov kept winning. He tied for first at Polanica-Zdrój 1965, and with Taimanov at Reykjavík 1968 and Skopje 1970. At Manila in 1974 he scored 10½/14, ahead of Petrosian and Larsen. He won at Zalaegerszeg 1977, Dnepropetrovsk 1980, Athens 1987, Budapest 1989 and Graested 1990, and tied for first in Moscow 'B' 1986. He took his fifth and sixth Moscow titles in 1972 and 1978.
Second and trainer
Vasiukov worked as a second to Viktor Korchnoi, Mark Taimanov, David Bronstein and Efim Geller, and to Anatoly Karpov in his world championship matches of 1978, 1984 and 1985. At Baguio in 1978 he joined Balashov, Zaitsev and Tal from the twenty-ninth game, as Kasparov records in My Great Predecessors, Part V. He also trained national teams for chess Olympiads.
In 1958 he was called to a Moscow chess club to play blitz against the young Bobby Fischer, who had been beating the masters there. In My Great Predecessors, Part IV, Vasiukov recalled that Fischer led him by one point after five games, but that he then adapted to Fischer's play and won by a large margin.
Before the 1962 Candidates tournament at Curaçao, Vasiukov studied a Pirc Defence position with Korchnoi in a holiday home near Moscow. Korchnoi recalled in Part V that Vasiukov persuaded him to try a defence he rarely played, predicting the line Fischer would choose. The prediction worked, and Korchnoi won their fifth-round game.
Senior champion
In 1995 Vasiukov won the World Senior Championship. He kept playing long afterward; in 2002, at sixty-eight, he beat Loek van Wely at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow. From 2003 he headed the veterans' commission of the Russian Chess Federation. He also wrote a chronicle of the 1996 Karpov–Kamsky world championship match.
Legacy
Vasiukov died in a Moscow hospital on 10 May 2018, at eighty-five. He had become a grandmaster after learning the game in his teens, won the Moscow Championship six times, won international tournaments over five decades, helped Karpov in three world championship matches and became World Senior Champion.
Books
Books Evgeni Vasiukov wrote, co-wrote, edited, or contributed to. Translations and reprints are grouped under the same work.
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Paris, Elista, Yerevan: The World Chess Championship 1996, Karpov–Kamsky
Contributor — game commentary
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The Chronicle of the World Chess Championship ’96
Contributor — game commentary