Alexandr Beljavskij
- October 27, 2025
Two-time Candidate Tournament participant (1983, 1986)
Ranking: highest fourth in the world
Highest FIDE Elo Rating: 2710
Tournament career: winner of 12 super-tournaments:
4-time winner of the USSR Championship
2-time winner of the Tilburg Chess Tournament
winner of Tata Steel Masters 1984,
and several others…
Chess Olympiads: four gold team medals
What earned him this:
Alexandr Beljavskij is a native of Lviv, but since the 1990s he has lived in Slovenia and represented this country. Or rather, he used to represent it, as he is now over seventy and not an active player.
He was at the peak of his career in the 1980s, when he climbed to fourth place in the world and twice was one of the Candidates. In his first participation in 1983, he lost the quarterfinals to Garry Kasparov, and three years later, in the tournament system, he finished seventh.
His best result is possibly his score in the second USSR vs World match in 1984, when he played the sixth board for the Soviet team and defeated the Larsen/Seirawan tandem 3.5:0.5. He defeated the vast majority of top players of his time and won several super-tournaments such as those in Wijk aan Zee, Tilburg, and of course, his four USSR championship titles and gold Olympic medals should not be overlooked.
Why he isn’t higher:
His career could have benefited from a slightly higher ranking and better results in the World Championship cycles.
Best games:
Alexandr Beljavskij vs Bent Larsen
Tilburg 1981
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Miroslav Janeček graduated in English Philology at Palacký University Olomouc. Currently he works in Prague as a content editor for a large marketing company. His roots are in Opava - the historic and cultural centre of the Czech part of Silesia. That city is also the home of Slezan Opava, the chess club where Miroslav started to play chess, later went on to work as a youth coach and which he to this day proudly represents. As an aspiring chess publicist, he is the main author of articles on ChessDB.cz. In his free time, in addition to chess and writing, he also devotes himself to racket sports, history, and literature.