Alexander Kotov

Alexander Kotov was born on August 12, 1913 in Tula, Russia to a large working class family. In 1939, he moved to Moscow to study engineering. He also studied chess a great deal. Today, he is best remembered as an author. His trilogy of books Think Like a Grandmaster, Play Like a Grandmaster and Plan Like a Grandmaster are his best known, with Think Like... (which was translated into English by Bernard Cafferty and published by Batsford in 1971) being particularly famous. The book is not concerned with advising where pieces should be placed on the board, or tactical motifs, but rather with the method of thinking that should be employed during a game. Kotov's advice to identify "candidate moves" and methodically examine them to build up an "analysis tree" remains well known today.

As a player, Kotov also had a number of good results. His 2nd place finish in the 1939 USSR Championship was one of his best early results. This won him the Grandmaster title, the 3rd Soviet player to hold the title after Botvinnik and Grigory Levenfish. In 1948, he won the title jointly with David Bronstein. He finished 1st ahead of Vasily Smyslov at Venice in 1950.

In 1950 at the first ever Candidates Tournament, he scored 8.5/18. He had qualified for this event in Budapest by finishing 4th in the 1948 Interzonal Tournament in Stockholm. In the 1952 Saltsjobaden Interzonal, he won with a score of 16.5/20, without losing a game. He finished 3 clear points ahead of Tigran Petrosian and Mark Taimanov in 2nd place. In the following Candidates Tournament in Zurich, he was the only person to defeat the tournament's winner, Smyslov.

In 1952 and 1954, he played for the USSR at the Chess Olympiads. After 1960, all the tournaments he played in were outside the USSR. He tied for 1st with Svetozar Gligoric at Hastings in 1962, half a point head of Smyslov. He played in very few tournaments in his later years. He died on January 8, 1981.

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