{"title":"Mykola Fuzik","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"critical-theory-a-chess-biography-of-isaak-lipnitsky-paperback","title":"Critical Theory: A Chess Biography of Isaak Lipnitsky - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIsaak Lipnitsky (1923-1959) was a leading Ukrainian chess player of the early 1950s as well as a celebrated chess theoretician and journalist, whose textbook Questions of Modern Chess Theory became an internationally recognized classic. Born in Kiev shortly after the establishment of Soviet control over Ukraine, he achieved a career-best result of second equal in the 1950 Soviet Championship, half a point behind the winner Paul Keres, during which he defeated Petrosian, Smyslov, and Geller. He also played in the finals of the 1951 and 1952 Soviet Championships, as well as winning the Ukrainian Championship in 1949 and 1956, and the Kiev Championship in 1956. According to the Chessmetrics website Lipnitsky was ranked no. 12 in the world between September and December 1950 with a peak rating of 2700 and a best TPR of 2729 recorded in the 1950 Soviet Championship.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the words of Grandmaster Kevin Spraggett: \"As a player Lipnitsky was well trained in strategy and tactics, capable of playing all types of positions equally well. However, what he really liked doing was playing complicated positions, a trait that many of the finest Ukraine masters seemed to have inherited.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLipnitsky's fascinating biography with original research by the authors takes us from his childhood in a poor Jewish family, through to his membership of the Kiev children's chess club at the Pioneer Palace under the tutelage of the great coach Alexander Konstantinopolsky, who nurtured David Bronstein's talent at the same time. It introduces the reader to the origins of the Soviet Chess School in Kiev, which was one of the USSR's greatest talent mills. Lipnitsky's World War Two service as an intelligence officer is discussed, as is what is known of his wife and daughter and his eventual full-time chess career.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLipnitsky died at the tragically young age of 35 from a terminal disease that curtailed his tournament performances in his final years. His tragedy was not confined to that, however. His paternal grandparents and aunts were murdered by the Nazi occupiers during the War, and his daughter later died in a psychiatric hospital. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKyiv-based Candidate Masters and chess historians Mykola Fuzik (born in 1957) and Alexei Radchenko (1947-2013) spent several years researching Isaak Lipnitsky's biography, which was first published in Ukraine in 2018. This book provides instructional analysis of 63 of his best games, mostly annotated by Lipnitsky and his contemporaries, supported by computer corrections. Opponents include Tal, Petrosian, Smyslov, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Keres, Geller, Averbakh and Taimanov among other names. It also contains a highly original article he wrote on attack along the a1-h8 diagonal, as well as a number of interesting photographs of the protagonist and his family.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCheck out the Elk and Ruby website for special offers on this and other books!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67973110792415,"sku":"9781916839014","price":38.88,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/x1k8fGFkxE9781916839014.webp?v=1791820383"},{"product_id":"critical-theory-a-chess-biography-of-isaak-lipnitsky-hardcover","title":"Critical Theory: A Chess Biography of Isaak Lipnitsky - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIsaak Lipnitsky (1923-1959) was a leading Ukrainian chess player of the early 1950s as well as a celebrated chess theoretician and journalist, whose textbook Questions of Modern Chess Theory became an internationally recognized classic. Born in Kiev shortly after the establishment of Soviet control over Ukraine, he achieved a career-best result of second equal in the 1950 Soviet Championship, half a point behind the winner Paul Keres, during which he defeated Petrosian, Smyslov, and Geller. He also played in the finals of the 1951 and 1952 Soviet Championships, as well as winning the Ukrainian Championship in 1949 and 1956, and the Kiev Championship in 1956. According to the Chessmetrics website Lipnitsky was ranked no. 12 in the world between September and December 1950 with a peak rating of 2700 and a best TPR of 2729 recorded in the 1950 Soviet Championship.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the words of Grandmaster Kevin Spraggett: \"As a player Lipnitsky was well trained in strategy and tactics, capable of playing all types of positions equally well. However, what he really liked doing was playing complicated positions, a trait that many of the finest Ukraine masters seemed to have inherited.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLipnitsky's fascinating biography with original research by the authors takes us from his childhood in a poor Jewish family, through to his membership of the Kiev children's chess club at the Pioneer Palace under the tutelage of the great coach Alexander Konstantinopolsky, who nurtured David Bronstein's talent at the same time. It introduces the reader to the origins of the Soviet Chess School in Kiev, which was one of the USSR's greatest talent mills. Lipnitsky's World War Two service as an intelligence officer is discussed, as is what is known of his wife and daughter and his eventual full-time chess career.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLipnitsky died at the tragically young age of 35 from a terminal disease that curtailed his tournament performances in his final years. His tragedy was not confined to that, however. His paternal grandparents and aunts were murdered by the Nazi occupiers during the War, and his daughter later died in a psychiatric hospital. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKyiv-based Candidate Masters and chess historians Mykola Fuzik (born in 1957) and Alexei Radchenko (1947-2013) spent several years researching Isaak Lipnitsky's biography, which was first published in Ukraine in 2018. This book provides instructional analysis of 63 of his best games, mostly annotated by Lipnitsky and his contemporaries, supported by computer corrections. Opponents include Tal, Petrosian, Smyslov, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Keres, Geller, Averbakh and Taimanov among other names. It also contains a highly original article he wrote on attack along the a1-h8 diagonal, as well as a number of interesting photographs of the protagonist and his family.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCheck out the Elk and Ruby website for special offers on this and other books!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67980888178911,"sku":"9781916839021","price":53.28,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/EZ9q2NDUb19781916839021.webp?v=1791913864"},{"product_id":"pan-inspector-a-chess-biography-of-yuri-sakharov-paperback","title":"Pan Inspector: A Chess Biography of Yuri Sakharov - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eYuri Sakharov (1922-1981) was a leading Ukrainian chess player and coach from the 1950s until his death, ranked the world number 17 in 1968 according to Chessmetrics. Although little-known in the West as he rarely played outside the Soviet Union, he qualified for six Soviet championship finals, with a highest position of joint sixth in 1967. Sakharov won the Ukrainian Championship twice and deployed many opening novelties in his time. As he aged he increasingly turned to correspondence chess, where he won gold medals at the ICCF Olympiads as a member of the Soviet team in 1972 and 1976.\u003c\/p\u003eAs we see in this book, he went toe-to-toe with greats such as Tal, Smyslov, Bronstein, Keres, Polugaevsky, Taimanov, Geller, Averbakh, Stein, Ivkov and Kotov among many others. He started out as a primarily attacking player whose games often involved the Sicilian (especially the Najdorf variation), King's Indian and Ruy Lopez openings, but he later evolved into a more universal player with strong positional skills. Sakharov also coached or seconded many future or contemporary grandmasters, including Vladimir Savon, Gennady Kuzmin, Ruslan Pogorelov, Dimitri Komarov, and Vladimir Sergeev, as well as WGMs Lidia Semenova and Elena Sedina. As his own chess understanding matured, he focused his pupils' attention on more solid openings, such as the Slav Defense and Nimzo-Indian.However, as first detailed to Western readers in the third volume of Sergey Voronkov's \u003cem\u003eMasterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships\u003c\/em\u003e, based on articles by this book's author Mykola Fuzik, Yuri Sakharov had a fascinating but tragic life-story. His father was executed in 1938 during the Stalin purges. Finding himself and his mother destitute under the Nazi occupation of Ukraine during World War II, he volunteered to work in Germany, although he later escaped and joined the US Army in a civilian capacity. During his time in Germany he found himself drawn into a tragic incident of which his contemporaries were almost certainly unaware. After his return to the USSR, a case was gradually built against him culminating in his arrest in 1951 followed by a trial in 1952 and imprisonment. Yet he survived five years in the Soviet GULAG system and emerged to play his best chess in his forties.Ukrainian Candidate Master Mykola Fuzik has written a detailed account of Sakharov's life and career based on many years of research. He previously published a biography of another leading Ukrainian chess player, Isaak Lipnitsky, with Elk and Ruby in 2024. The current book includes reminiscences of Sakharov's pupils and other strong players who studied with him, such as double World Senior Champion GM Vladimir Okhotnik. 121 of Sakharov's own games and fragments, as well as four games of his contemporaries that he annotated, are analyzed in this book. Many games are annotated by Sakharov himself and others by some of the strongest contemporary players of his time, including Korchnoi and Flohr, as well as guest grandmasters and the author. In particular, Ukrainian Grandmaster Vladimir Sergeev provided a significant portion of the annotations for this book as well as making important contributions on the biographical side. The games and commentary are highly instructive - as Vladimir Okhotnik remarks at the end of one game: \"I think that this game demonstrates Yuri Nikolaevich Sakharov's strongest sides: serious home preparation, consistent game plans, and excellent conversion technique.\"This book is supplemented with a large number of photos never published before in the West.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":68025096437983,"sku":"9781916839038","price":50.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/n_Xy2Smv0_9781916839038.webp?v=1792014758"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/mykola-fuzik.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}