Early Life
He was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) to a Russian mother and father, and learned to play chess at the age of five on a train evacuating from Leningrad during World War II. He first drew wide attention in 1947 at age ten, when he defeated Soviet champion Mikhail Botvinnik in a simultaneous exhibition in Leningrad. His early coach was Vladimir Zak, a respected master and trainer. During his youth, from the age of ten, Spassky often worked on chess for several hours a day with master-level coaches. He set records as the youngest Soviet player to achieve first category rank (age ten), candidate master rank (age eleven), and Soviet Master rank (age fifteen). In 1952, at fifteen, Spassky scored 50 percent in the Soviet Championship semifinal at Riga, and placed second in the Leningrad Championship that same year, being highly praised by Botvinnik.
Read more about this topic: Boris Spassky
Other articles related to "early life, early, life":
... Aman graduated from St ... Xavier's College, Mumbai and went to University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California for further studies on student aid ...
... of the Malay Archipelago, why does this area loom so large in his early work? (Leaving aside The Rescue, whose completion was repeatedly deferred till 1920, the last of the Malay novels was ... richness of tropical nature and the dreariness of human life within it accorded well with the pessimistic mood of his early works." After Johannes Freiesleben, Danish master of the ... begin what Najder calls "the most traumatic journey of his life." After his November 1889 meeting with Thys, and before departing for the Congo, Conrad had again gone ...
... In 1935, on his father's advice, Tobin took the entrance exams for Harvard University ... Despite no special preparation for the exams, he passed and was admitted with a national scholarship from the university ...
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or early:
“It is a conquest when we can lift ourselves above the annoyances of circumstances over which we have no control; but it is a greater victory when we can make those circumstances our helpers,—when we can appreciate the good there is in them. It has often seemed to me as if Life stood beside me, looking me in the face, and saying, “Child, you must learn to like me in the form in which you see me, before I can offer myself to you in any other aspect.””
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)