Tigran Petrosian

Tigran Petrosian (1929-1984), Soviet chess player, who became an international grandmaster in 1952 and was the world chess champion from 1963 to 1969. Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian was born of Armenian parents in Tbilisi, Georgia, in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). He learned chess from his father and mother when he was 8 years old. His parents died when he was 16, and to support his family, Petrosian took on his father’s job as a caretaker of a war veterans’ home. He continued to play chess in his spare time, however, and won a number of local events.

In 1946 Petrosian moved to Yerevan, Armenia, and that same year he won the Armenian championship. He won the event again in 1948, and a year later he moved to Moscow, USSR. In 1951 he won the Moscow city championship and took second in the Soviet national championship. Petrosian was one of the best players in the world in the early 1950s, placing second in the 1952 interzonal tournament held in Saltsjöbaden, Sweden, and fifth in the 1953 candidates tournament held jointly in Neuhausen, Germany, and Zürich, Switzerland.

Petrosian earned numerous victories in the Moscow city championships and the Soviet championships of the 1950s and 1960s. In international competition, however, it took him years to become a challenger for the world title. In 1962 he finally won the right to challenge for the world championship by capturing first in the candidates tournament held in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles.

A year later Petrosian played Mikhail Botvinnik of the USSR in the world championship, and after two months of play Petrosian emerged as the winner. He successfully defended his title until 1969, when he lost the world championship to fellow Soviet Boris Spassky. During his world championship reign, Petrosian edited the Soviet chess magazine Shakhmatnaya Moskva (Moscow Chess) and received a master’s degree in philosophy from Yerevan University for his study of chess logic.