Mikhail Gurevich (chess Player)

Mikhail Gurevich (chess Player)

Mikhail Naumovich Gurevich (born 22 February 1959, in Kharkiv, USSR) is a Soviet chess player. He lived in Belgium from 1991 to 2005 and since then resides in Turkey.

Gurevich won the Ukrainian Chess Championship in 1984 and became USSR Champion in 1985, controversially taking the title on tiebreak points from co-winners Alexander Chernin and Viktor Gavrikov, after a three-way playoff was organized and all the games were drawn. However, he was not allowed to leave the country to participate in the Interzonal, and Gavrikov and Chernin went in his place.

Gurevich was awarded the International Master title in 1985, and became an International Grandmaster in 1986. In 1987 he was first at Moscow ahead of Oleg Romanishin and Sergey Dolmatov. He finished second at Leningrad after Rafael Vaganian, but ahead of Andrei Sokolov and Artur Yusupov.

At his peak, between 1989 and 1991, Gurevich was consistently ranked in the top ten players in the world. He took first at Reggio Emilia 1989, ahead of Vassily Ivanchuk, Jaan Ehlvest and Viswanathan Anand and tied for first at Moscow 1990 with Alexander Khalifman and Evgeny Bareev. His highest world rank ever was a tie for fifth place on the January 1990 and January 1991 FIDE rating lists, with ratings of 2645 and 2650 respectively.

Mikhail Gurevich's results in the late 1990s were not as impressive as in previous years, but he has since made a comeback. He achieved his highest rating of 2694 on the January 2001 rating list, ranking him 14th in the world. In 2001 he won the Belgian Chess Championship with a perfect 9/9 score.

He placed 8th at the 2005 FIDE World Cup, beating Robert Markuš, Pavel Eljanov, Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Malakhov along the way before losing to eventual winner Levon Aronian. This qualified him for the Candidates Tournament for the FIDE World Chess Championship 2007, in May–June 2007. However he was eliminated in the first round, losing his match against Peter Leko 3.5-0.5.

He currently lives in Turkey and won the 2006 Turkish Chess Championship. In 2009 he tied for first with Michał Krasenkow at the World Chess Open in Leon.

In team chess events, he represented the USSR at the 1989 Haifa European Team Chess Championship, winning team gold and individual bronze medals. In 1992, playing for Belgium, he had a fine result at the Manila Chess Olympiad, scoring 75% on board 1. In 2006, playing top board for his second adopted nation Turkey at the Turin Olympiad, he registered a respectable 58%.

Mikhail Gurevich was also a long-time second to eventual world champion Vishwanathan Anand in the 1990s. He is known as an expert on the French Defence, the Reshevsky Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defence, and the Petrosian Variation of the Queen's Indian Defence. In 1991, he wrote a book on the latter, entitled Queen's Indian Defence: Kasparov System, published by Batsford.

In 2006, Gurevich was awarded the title of FIDE Senior Trainer. He also holds the title of FIDE Arbiter.

In the Fourth ACP World Rapid Cup knockout tournament, held between 27 and 29 May 2010 in Odessa, Ukraine, Gurevich created a sensation after beating two grandmasters rated at over 2700.