Lev Polugajevsky
- November 9, 2025
Three-time Candidate Tournament participant (1974, 1977, 1980)
Rankings: Chessmetrics: World No. 2, FIDE: World No. 3
Highest FIDE Elo Rating: 2645
Tournament career: winner of 12 super-tournaments:
2-time winner of the USSR Championship
2-time winner of Tata Steel Masters, IBM International Chess Tournament Amsterdam
and several others…
Chess Olympiads: six gold and one silver team medals
Why he deserved it:
During the Soviet dominance of world chess, many outstanding players emerged from this country. Paradoxically, they are somewhat forgotten because the competition they faced within their own country was enormous. If a player like Lev Polugajevsky had been from Czechoslovakia, he would have immediately become our greatest chess legend.
This player spent part of the 1960s, the entire 1970s, and a significant part of the 1980s in the world’s top ten. Even before the official FIDE Elo lists were introduced, he was ranked second in the world according to retroactively calculated rankings, and he appeared as high as third on the FIDE list. He spent most of the 1970s around the fifth place in the world.
Polugajevsky is one of the few players who participated in both major USSR vs World matches: in 1970, he played on the fourth board and lost 1.5:2.5 to Vlastimil Hort; in 1984, he played on the third board and lost to Korchnoi.
Polugajevsky is a winner of the USSR Championship and Tata Steel Masters, among many other tournaments. He played in the Candidates matches three times in a row, reaching the semifinals twice, where he was defeated by Korchnoi on both occasions.
Why he isn’t higher:
There is nothing significantly missing from this master’s career, but on the other hand, he doesn’t stand out significantly among other top players. Unfortunately for him, when it came to the crunch at the biggest events against the greatest opponents, he often had to bow before them. However, he was very consistent and remained at the top for a long time.
Best games:
Lev Polugajevsky vs Mikhail Tal
USSR Championship 1969, Moscow
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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.