Leonid Stein
- October 26, 2025
Ranking: Chessmetrics: World number three for five months in 1966-1967, FIDE: World number eleven in 1972
Highest FIDE Elo rating: 2620
Tournament career: winner of 11 super-tournaments:
3x winner of the USSR Championship
2x winner of the Moscow Chess Tournament
winner of the Hastings International Chess Congress 1967/68, Las Palmas Chess Tournament 1973
and a few others…
Chess Olympiads: two gold team medals, one gold and one silver individual medal
Why he deserved it:
Today, the relatively forgotten Soviet grandmaster Leonid Stein suffered from playing for the Soviet Union. He played during the time of Soviet hegemony in the chess world when this superpower had all the world champions and every title match was held in Moscow. There were so many great players from the USSR that it led to the idea of organizing a USSR vs. Rest of the World match in 1970, which the communist country narrowly won. Stein played one game on the first board as a substitute for Spassky and lost to Larsen.
In no respect did Stein suffer from his nationality as much as in the world championship cycles. He qualified twice from the interzonal tournament to the Candidates Tournament, or rather, he would have qualified if there hadn’t been a rule that no more than three players from one country could participate in this tournament. Stein always qualified as the fourth from the USSR and thus never participated in the Candidates Tournament. When he unexpectedly died of a heart attack in 1973 at the age of 38, he was considered one of the favorites for the upcoming cycle.
Of course, Stein achieved many successes with the Soviet team at chess Olympiads, and his tournament career was also successful. He won prestigious events in Hastings and Las Palmas and was a three-time Soviet champion.
Why he isn’t higher:
Despite his great misfortune, not participating in the Candidates Tournament simply does not allow for a higher placement, no matter how much of a giant he was on the world chess scene during the Cold War.
Best games:
Leonid Stein vs Tigran Petrosian
Moscow 1961
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 Ne7 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 c5 7.Qg4 Nf5 8.Bd3 h5 9.Qf4 Nc6 10.Ne2 Nce7 11.Ng3 Ng6 12.Qd2 Bd7 13.Rb1 Rb8 14.O-O c4 15.Be2 Nxg3 16.fxg3 h4 17.Bg4 hxg3 18.hxg3 Qe7 19.a4 Bxa4 20.Ra1 b5 21.Ba3 Qd7 22.Rf2 Rb7 23.Raf1 Qd8 24.Qd1 Rh6 25.Bc1 Rh7 26.Bxe6 1-0
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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.