Lev Psakhis

Lev Psakhis
Lev Psakhis
	USSR
Title	Grandmaster (1982)
FIDE rating	2438 (April 2024)
Peak rating	2625 (January 1995)

Lev Borisovich Psakhis (Hebrew: לב בוריסוביץ' פסחיס; Лев Борисович Псахис; born 29 November 1958 in Tver (then Kalinin), Russia) is a naturalised Israeli chess grandmaster, trainer and author. He is also a two-time former champion of the Soviet Union.

Biography

He gained the

International Grandmaster titles in 1980 and 1982 respectively, either side of two momentous Soviet Championship victories in 1980 (Vilnius—shared with Alexander Beliavsky) and 1981 (Frunze—shared with Garry Kasparov

, whom he defeated in round 2).

In international tournaments, he has had many fine results, including outright or shared first place at

Erevan 1988 and Herzliya

1998.

In the

Interzonal at Las Palmas later the same year. Posting only a modest score however, he failed to progress to the Candidates

stage of the competition.

He was champion of Israel in 1997 and shared the title in 1999. He has also represented his adopted country at the Chess Olympiad seven times between 1990 and 2002. At the European Team Chess Championship, he was first a member of the Soviet team at Plovdiv in 1983, when he won individual and team gold medals. Representing Israel thereafter, he took the board 4 individual gold medal at Batumi in 1999.

Over the years, he has assisted in many training programs, dating back to the late 1980s when he worked with Kasparov and Artur Yusupov. He played a training match with Kasparov in 1990 and lost 1–5. Other students and famous chess players whom he has seconded include Susan Polgar, Judit Polgár,^[1] Daniel Naroditsky, ^[2] and Emil Sutovsky. In 2011, Psakhis underwent liver transplant. He managed to recover successfully and return to the chess scene.^[3]

Playing style

This section uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves.

He was in his youth a player of sharp and vivid, complex positions, but nowadays prefers to play in a positional sense. Consequently, he has developed an affinity with the French Defence and is a noted expert on it, beginning with writing The Complete French (and The Complete Benoni) for B.T. Batsford in the early nineties. His latest Batsford effort is a four-volume treatise on the French in 2003/4, titled Vol.1 French Defence: 3. Nd2 (Tarrasch), Vol.2 French Defence: Advance and Anti-French Variations, Vol.3 French Defence: 3. Nc3 Bb4 (Winawer) and Vol.4 French Defence: Steinitz, Classical and Other Variations.