Tigran Petrosyan: biography, creativity, career, personal life

Tigran Vartanovich Petrosyan is a Soviet chess player, chess journalist and publicist of Armenian origin. The ninth world chess champion (1963-1969). He received the title in 1963, defeating Mikhail Botvinnik. He defended the title in 1966, defeating Boris Spassky. Lost the title of champion of 1969, losing to Boris Spassky. He was famous for his ability to defend himself, thanks to which he received the nickname "Iron Tigran".

Childhood and youth

Born on June 17, 1929 in Tiflis (according to some reports, in the Armenian village of Ilystye, and then the family moved to Tiflis). Father - Vartan Petrosyan, janitor of the Tiflis officers house. Tigran was the third and youngest child in the family (after the brother of Amayak and sister Bartush). He liked to go to school, studied at Armenian school No. 73. According to Petrosyan’s recollections, he learned the rules of chess in 1940 or 1941 in a pioneer camp. In addition to chess, he played checkers, backgammon and Turkish checkers. When the Palace of Pioneers opened in Tbilisi, where there was a chess club, the guy signed up there. The first few months comprehended the basics of chess under the leadership of Nikolai Sorokin, and from the end of 1941 - Archil Ebralidze. The first chess textbook was an abridged translation of the book by Ilya Mayzelis "Textbook of the Chess Game for the Young", a small Tigran purchased in an Armenian store. The next read chess book was "My system in practice" by Aron Nimtsovich. Young Petrosyan analyzed the positions and games of labor from the Danish grandmaster so many times that he learned by heart, and Nimtsovich’s chess views became one of the foundations of the style of the future world champion. Among the favorite chess players were also Jose Raul Capablanca and Emanuel Lasker. The section coach, Ebralidze, was a supporter of a logical and solid positional game and demanded that the students: “No chance! The only good game is where everything was logical, where each of the rivals each time found and made the best move and where the one who saw won and counted on. " At first, Tigran was not distinguished by special skill among peers-chess players. Many years later, when Petrosyan was already a grandmaster, his first coach admitted: "Forgive me. I did not immediately feel your future. Others were more visible. Bold, more confident …". So, Ebralidze considered the main hope among his pupils to be peer Petrosyan Alexander Buslaev (vice champion of GRSR 1953 and champion of GRSR 1954).

Soon after the start of the Second World War, her mother died, Tigran went to work as a time-attendant, a student of projection mechanics, to somehow help his father, who was already over sixty. Through work and a serious illness, the guy missed one and a half years of school, and when he returned to school, his father died. Since his brother went to the front, in order to maintain public housing at the House of Officers on Rustaveli Avenue, the 15-year-old Tigran was forced to replace his father, becoming a janitor of the House of Officers. Aunt took care of the family, who helped clean the street.

In 1944, the eighth grader Petrosyan was allowed to participate in the championship of Georgia among men. There, the young man acted mediocre, taking 9-11th places out of 18 participants. The following year, the young man took second place in the championship of Tbilisi, ahead of his mentor Ebralidze.

After more than four years of chess practice, the 16-year-old Tigran Petrosyan begins to win in republican and all-Union tournaments, dividing 1-3 places at the All-Union Youth Tournament in Leningrad 1945. And the same year he received the title of champion of Georgia among adults. In 1946, Paul Keres, Vladas Mikenas and Evgeny Zagoryansky were out of the competition in the championship of the Georgian SSR. All of them were ahead of Petrosyan, who took 5th place. This tournament was the first where the future grandmaster took points in a game with a world-class player - in an equal position he offered a draw to Keres, but he refused. In the endgame, the Estonian was forced to admit that the position was equal and still agreed to a draw.

In 1946 he moved to Yerevan at the initiative of Andranik Hakobyan, one of the founders of chess in Armenia, the then director of the chess club. Out of the competition, he won the championship of Armenia, received the title after the match with Heinrich Kasparyan. The same year he won the All-Union youth tournament in Leningrad, without suffering a single defeat. A. Hakobyan hired a chess player to work as an instructor in the Spartak society and applied for a room in Yerevan, which was eventually allocated to the republican committee of physical education. In the championships of the Armenian SSR 1947 and 1948 he shared 1-2 places with Heinrich Kasparyan, in 1949 he lost the full-time game and lost half a point, finishing the tournament in second place. It is interesting that in the republican championship of 1949 both first winners lost their games to the mediocre chess player Loris Kalashyan, a philosopher student who was a friend of Petrosyan, and in the future created a chess department at the Institute of Physical Education and defended his doctoral dissertation in philosophy.

In the late 1940s, Tigran could not yet compete with the leading chess players of the Soviet Union. In the semifinal of the championship of the country of 1947 he finished 16-17th among 18 participants, in the semifinal of the championship of 1948 he became fifth, while the first three winners went to the final. In 1949, Petrosyan finally passed the selection screen for the USSR Championship finals, taking second place in the semifinals, which took place in Tbilisi. He was ahead, in particular, of such masters as Kholmov, Ilyvitsky and Makogonov.

In October 1949, Tigran Petrosyan arrived in Moscow to participate in the finals of the 1949 USSR Chess Championship and with the intentions of remaining in the capital. In the first round against Alexander Kotov, on the seventh move, the representative of Yerevan made an elementary mistake and surrendered after a few moves. He lost the following games to Smyslovaya, Flora, Geller and Keres, and felt the taste of victory already in the 6th round, having defeated Andre Lilienthal. In his debut championship of the Soviet Union, Petrosyan finished in 16th place. In Moscow, the young Armenian master had much more opportunities to participate in tournaments to improve the practical game. He had a coach - Andre Lilienthal.

Petrosyan was very unpretentious in everyday life. At first, as an avid fan of the Spartak football club and a member of the sports society of the same name, he agreed to live at the training base of FC Spartak in Tarasovka, although it was about thirty kilometers from there to the center of Moscow. Lilienthal recalls that after a game in one of the Moscow chess clubs, Tigran announced that he would stay there for the night - it turned out that he lived right in the chess club. 1950 took third place in the championship of Moscow and divided 12-13th place in the championship of the USSR.

The fight for the world title (1951-1962)

The year 1951 is called a turning point in the career of a chess player, the beginning of the Iron Tigran era - he won the championship of Moscow, in the 1951 Soviet Union he shared 2-3 places with Yefim Geller (he was only ½ points behind the winner Paul Keres), received the title of grandmaster USSR and the opportunity to compete in the interzonal tournament.

Before going to the 1952 Interzonal Tournament in Stockholm, the young grandmaster had a very modest experience of international performances - only the Ґ memorial. Maroci in Budapest in the spring of that year. He won 7 games in the interzonal competition, 13 drew a draw and did not lose a single one, sharing 2-3 places with Mark Taimanov, getting the right to play in the tournament of candidates for the world champion title. In early 1953, he held a high-level international tournament in Bucharest (+7 -0 = 12), where he finished second, ahead of Boleslavsky, Spassky, L. Szabo and Sysmovaya. In preparation for the USSR-USA match, the Soviet grandmasters held a training tournament in Gagra in the summer of 1953, in which all the country's strongest chess players played except the world champion Botvinnik and vice-champion Bronstein. 22-year-old Petrosyan took second place after Vasily Smyslov, ahead of, in particular, Boleslavsky, Averbakh, Geller, Kotov, Taimanov and Keres. In Soviet times, the games of the tournament were not available, and its existence was not mentioned in chess literature and the press.

The 1953 Candidates Tournament took place in August-October in Neuhausen and Zurich and gathered all the strongest candidates for the world title. The tournament confirmed the dominance of the Soviet chess school in the world - among 10 leaders there were 8 representatives of the USSR.

In a similar cautious manner, he acted in the championship of the Soviet Union in 1954, where he did not suffer a single defeat, but he won only 6 times, agreeing to the world in 13 cases. As a result - 4-5th places.

In the national championship of 1958 he took second place: +5 -0 = 15. He was the only chess player who did not lose a single game, while the other participants lost at least two.

In January-February 1959, in his native Tbilisi, he first won the title of champion of the Soviet Union. In the first half of the tournament, Petrosyan got the flu and missed about a week. After recovering, the rest of the games had to be played with a denser schedule in order to catch up with other participants. Returning to the championship after a forced pause he began to play more actively, in the 9-12th rounds he won four victories in a row and took the lead until the end of the championship

In January 1960, he shared with Bent Larsen the first or second place in the Beverwake tournament. At the end of January, the next championship of the Soviet Union began in Leningrad. In a tense struggle until the last round, Tigran Petrosyan shared 2-3 places with Yefim Geller, half a point behind Viktor Korchnoi.

In January-February 1961, he won the national championship for the second time.

The 1962 Interzonal tournament ended with a confident victory for Bobby Fischer, who was 2½ points ahead of his pursuers. Tigran Petrosyan shared second or third places with Yefim Geller

The 1962 Candidates Tournament was held on the island of Curacao in the Caribbean. According to Petrosyan, the unusual climate (30-degree heat) and the long distance of the competition (28 rounds) caused significant fatigue for the grandmasters at the end of the tournament. A dense group in front were Efim Geller, Tigran Petrosyan and Paul Keres. Two final rounds, the 27th and 28th, became decisive. Keres unexpectedly lost Benko in the penultimate round (Pal Benko later recalled that during the analysis of the postponed game against Keres, Geller and Petrosyan came to his room, offering his help, which he refused) and in the last game he had to defeat Fisher. Before the last round, Petrosyan guaranteed himself at least second place and quickly agreed to a draw with outsider Philip, expecting the result of the Keres-Fisher game. The Estonian did not manage to beat the American child prodigy, agreed to a draw and was 1/2 point behind Petrosyan. After failures in the previous three cycles, Tigran Petrosyan finally became a participant in the match for the world title.

World Champion (1963-1969)

According to FIDE rules, the conditions of the match had to be approved at least 4 months before its start. After the completion of the applicants' tournament in June, several months had already passed, Petrosyan and Botvinnik as part of the Soviet Union managed to play at the 1962 chess Olympiad, and negotiations on the match had not yet begun. The champion was not sure whether he would defend the title, because at more than 50 years of age it was not easy to hold many months of intense matches, but the doctors still allowed him to play. The fact that Botvinnik is not in the best athletic form was evidenced by his mediocre result at the chess Olympiad: +5 -1 = 6 (66.7%), the worst indicator among chess players of the USSR team. Some uncertainty reigned, and chess players were invited to a meeting on the championship match on November 10th. The start of the match was scheduled for March 23, 1963.

At the end of November 1962, Petrosyan underwent a small surgical intervention to eliminate the causes of systematic tonsillitis. The operation was performed by Dr. Denisov, who earlier, in 1958, did a resection of the nasal septum to the chess player.

Petrosyan's second was Isaac Boleslavsky, before the match, the candidate was also helped by Alexei Suetin and Vladimir Simagin. The debut consultant of the current champion was Semyon Furman, who was preparing Botvinnik before the victory match against Tal in 1961. Botvinnik refused the services of a second. According to the rules of the match, the second was the only person who had the right to help the player during the home analysis of the deferred game.

Petrosyan unexpectedly lost the first game to White, but already in the fifth he evened the score, and in the seventh he stepped forward. In the 14th game, Petrosyan lost and the score was even again. At the post-match press conference, the Armenian chess player said: “In the 14th game, I analyzed the postponed position until three in the morning, and then the whole next day until the start of playing out. I came to the play out very tired, made a mistake in the endgame and was defeated. But I I realized how important it is to have a fresh mind! In the future, I dramatically changed the mode of the game day. I only took 10-15 minutes to prepare for the new game, I walked around the city a lot. After the crucial 15th game, in which the challenger stepped forward, Botvinnik’s game showed signs of fatigue, because he was eighteen years older than Petrosyan. The reigning champion had a good attack in the 16th game, but before re-writing down he recorded a bad move and the Iron Tigran managed to achieve a draw. After Petrosyan’s victories in the 18th and 19th games, it became clear that Botvinnik would no longer catch up. The rest of the party tired Botvinnik spent inertly.

All of Armenia watched the ups and downs of the championship match, several large demonstration chess boards were placed in the center of Yerevan, near which thousands of people gathered, and the moves were recognized from Moscow by phone. The motion pictures captured by a crowd of thousands who are watching the party on a large demonstration board on the facade of a house in Yerevan were subsequently used at the beginning of the film "Hello, It's Me!" (Russian. Hello, it's me!) directed by Frunze Dovlatyan with the participation of Armen Dzhigarkhanyan and Rolan Bykov. After the arrival of the new champion in Yerevan on a railway platform, a human stream lifted Tigran Petrosyan into his arms and carried several kilometers - right up to Lenin Square. Armenian fans gave the champion a car, and Georgian fans gave a picture of the classic of Armenian painting Martiros Saryan.

The first world championship tournament was the strong Pyatigorsky Cup in Los Angeles in July 1963. Petrosyan mediocrely spent the first round (3½ points out of 7) and in the second round he had to take risks in order to catch up with the leaders. Having received three victories in the second half of the tournament, he shared the first and second places with Keres with a total result of +4 -1 = 9. The organizers presented the winner of the Oldsmobile car brand.

In April-June 1966 he held a match for the world title against Boris Spassky, who became the winner of the matches of the applicants in 1965. The first six games of the championship match ended in a draw, Petrosyan won 7 and 10, in the 12th he had a good combination, but did not finish it, got into time trouble, and the game ended in a draw. This caused a psychological blow to Petrosyan, in addition, his throat was sore, and the title defender took advantage of the right to time out. After that, the initiative passed to the applicant. In the 13th game, Petrosyan achieved a draw position during the game, but he made a mistake in time pressure and lost. The next game the champion played demoralized and only during the finish-up was saved from defeat. Spassky won the 19th game and equalized in the match - 9½: 9½.

In the 20th game, Spassky surrendered in a hopeless situation. The rivals spent the next game carefully, without risk, and agreed to a draw. in the 22nd game there was a threefold repetition of the position, but a draw did not suit Boris Spassky, he continued the game, fell into a difficult position and surrendered. The score was 12:10 in favor of the champion, therefore, according to the rules, he defended his title. The parties that remained became a formality.

At a tournament in Venice in 1967, the world champion was a clear favorite. From the first rounds, leadership was seized by Johannes Donner (Holland) and Tigran Petrosyan. In the 9th round, a full-time meeting of opponents took place, in which already in the middle of the game Petrosyan had two extra pawns and a good position. However, a series of unsuccessful moves allowed Donner to save the game and end in a draw. As a result, the Dutch grandmaster was one point ahead of the world champion.

In 1968, at a high level and without defeat, he held the Chess Olympiad in Lugano, but at the international tournament in Palma de Mallorca, he was 2½ points behind winner Victor Korchnoi, taking 4th place.

1969 Tigran Petrosyan again met with Boris Spassky in the match for the chess crown. Despite the best tournament results of the applicant in recent years, experts considered Spassky’s chances to be higher. Spassky powerfully held the first eight games, after which the score was 5: 3 in his favor. The lost victory in the 9th game, where Petrosyan managed to snatch a draw, and the defeat in the 10th game knocked the applicant out of balance and in the 11th game the champion equalized - 5½: 5½.

After twenty games, Spassky was a point ahead, and the 21st game was decisive, where Petrosyan positionally lost and had to sacrifice quality and attack in order to maintain the chances of a draw, but chose the exchange and simplification of the position, which played into the hands of the applicant game to victory. Boris Spassky received a comfortable two-point advantage, which he retained until the end of the match.

Despite the defeat in the match for the world title, the grandmaster was in good shape, which was confirmed by victories in the 1969 USSR Championship and second place in the international tournament in Palma de Mallorca.

After the 1969 match, he stopped working with long-time second and coach Isaac Boleslavsky.

Member of the "Match of the Century" in 1970 in Belgrade, where the world chess team played against the USSR team. The match consisted of 4 rounds on 10 chessboards, and American Robert Fisher was the opponent of Petrosyan on the second board. Petrosyan lost to Fischer in the first two games, and the next two ended in a draw - 1: 3. V. Korchnoi and V. Roshal on the pages of the newspaper "64" expressed the opinion that psychologically the former world champion was not ready to confront the American grandmaster. At the end of the year, Fisher confidently won the 1970 Interzonal Tournament and became one of the favorites for the world title.

In the qualifying champion cycle 1973-1975, the rules stipulated that in order to win in the quarter-finals of the matches of applicants, three parties must be won (match limit - 16 games), to win in the semifinal - four games, and for victory in the final - five games. Tigran Petrosyan, as a finalist of the previous cycle, began the fight in 1974 with the quarter finals, where in the city of Palma de Mallorca the Hungarian Lajos Portis defeated. Possible venues for the Korchnoi semi-final - Petrosyan was called Moscow, Kiev or Odessa. Leningrader Korchnoi refused to play in Moscow (Petrosyan lived there) and Kiev (there he lost to Spassky in the semi-final match of the applicants in 1968). The semi-final match of the 1974 applicants in Odessa ended in scandal, after which Petrosyan refused to continue the fight after the 5th game. Officially - due to health problems. Viktor Korchnoi claimed that in tense moments of the fight Petrosyan began to swing his leg, swinging the table and touching the opponent’s foot. The Armenian grandmaster stated that the provocations were started by a Russian who also verbally insulted his opponent. Therefore, Petrosyan, after losing in the fifth game, when the score was 1: 3 in favor of Korchnoi, refused to continue the match.

In March-April 1977, in the Italian Chocco, he held a quarter-final match of applicants against Viktor Korchnoi, who did not return to the USSR after the tournament in Amsterdam in 1976 and asked for political asylum in Western Europe. Petrosyan was among the signatories of an open letter, which condemned the actions of the “defector”, so the match was held in an atmosphere of hostility and almost hatred. Before the first game, the rivals did not say hello and did not even shake hands with each other. Korchnoi did not appreciate the level of the match in his memoirs, because both participants made mistakes repeatedly. Petrosyan lost with a minimum score of 5½: 6½.

The 1978 Chess Olympiad was the first where the Soviet Union lost in the fight for gold medals. “Iron Tigran” on the second board played reliably (+3 -0 = 6), but the USSR team lost the first place to Hungary. After that, the national team was rejuvenated, and Petrosyan was no longer called to the national team to participate in the Olympiads.

In the 1979 interzonal tournament in Rio de Janeiro, the 50-year-old grandmaster shared 1-3 places, becoming the only participant who passed the tournament without defeat.

The draw for the quarter finals of the applicants again identified Viktor Korchnoi as rivals. The match of 10 games took place in Austrian Velden in March 1980 and ended in defeat for the ex-champion after nine games - 3½: 5½.

In a very strong "Tournament of Stars" in Moscow in 1981, he shared 9-10 places with Ulf Andersson.

Fast chess, journalism, coaching

Petrosyan thought and played rather quickly, had the glory of a strong player in blitz. Four times won the popular blitz championships of Moscow for the prizes of the newspaper "Evening Moscow", and in March 1971 he won the All-Union blitz tournament of grandmasters with a phenomenal result of 14.5 out of 15 (before Korchnoi, Balashov, Karpov, Tal, etc.). In the strongest international blitz tournament of the 1960-1970s in 1970, Novi Sad took 4th place (after Fisher, Tal and Korchnoi). Grandmaster Salo Flor of 1971 called the world's strongest blitz players Petrosyan and Fisher.

The journalistic talent of a chess player was revealed while commenting on Botvinnik's championship matches with Smyslov (1957 and 1958) and Tal (1960 and 1961) in the newspaper Sovetsky Sport. He is the author of chess articles in Pravda, Literaturnaya Gazeta, Chess in the USSR and other publications.

In 1963-1966 - chief editor of the journal "Chess Moscow", subsequently, thanks to his request, the weekly journal "64" began to appear in Moscow. For almost ten years Petrosyan worked as its chief editor (1968-1977). He wrote the preface to several books and delivered chess lectures on television.

Although Tigran Petrosyan did not consider himself a good coach because of his complex nature, he was among the leaders of the Spartak children's school in Moscow, founded in 1976. Classes of Petrosyan were visited in childhood by grandmaster Boris Gelfand.

Petrosyan has always been loyal to the Soviet regime, in the book “The KGB plays chess” (2009), the authors write that the grandmaster collaborated with the KGB.

Since 1958 - Member of the Presidium of the USSR Chess Federation. He was the chairman of the Higher Qualification Commission, headed the presidium of the chess section of the Spartak Sports School.

Death

In recent years, he felt bad, which led to a deterioration in chess results. In December 1983, he began working on an autobiography, but his health condition did not allow him to complete. Doctors diagnosed pancreatic cancer, the grandmaster underwent two operations. He died in a hospital of the Ministry of Railways in Moscow on August 13, 1984. He was buried at the Armenian cemetery in Moscow near the central avenue, on site 6/1.

Personal life

Wife - Rona Yakovlevna (from Avineser’s house), translator from English, Jewish, native of Kiev. Born in 1923, married Petrosyan in 1952, died in 2003, was buried at the Vostryakovsky cemetery in Moscow. They brought up two sons. Michael is the eldest son from Rona’s first marriage; joint son - Vartan. Rona always supported Tigran and was a good psychologist. Son Michael recalls that "… dad did not want to become a world champion. His mother forced him to." Rona also drove a car, drove her husband, Tigran almost never got behind the wheel.

Style

Petrosyan is considered a classic in the positional style of the game and a master of defense. His contemporaries called him the best chess defender of the “world.” He combined the depth of thinking with exceptional intuition, a sense of position, high tactical skill and filigree implementation technique. He called his idols Nimtsovich, Capablanca and Rubinstein.

As a connoisseur of closed openings, he tried not to “reveal his cards”, but first to find out the opponent’s plan for the game. Among the techniques were, for example, not to swiftly attack at the first opportunity, but to limit the opponent as much as possible and develop your own figures to obtain a profitable middlegame and endgame. He became famous for his ability to sacrifice material for positional reasons. За долговременные плюсы своей позиции (лучшая структура отличные опорные пункты) гроссмейстер легко отдавал пешку или качество, что стало его фирменным приемом. После жертвы Петросян играл подчеркнуто спокойно, не пытаясь сразу сыграть материал, а постепенно накапливал позиционные плюсы и преимущества.

Главной проблемой гроссмейстера было пассивное ведение борьбы. Из-за нежелания вести активную игру он иногда сводил вничью или проигрывал потенциально выигрышные партии.

Михаил Ботвинник: "Нападать на его фигуры трудно: атакующие фигуры продвигаются медленно, они вязнут в болоте, которое окружает лагерь фигур Петросяна. Если наконец удастся создать опасную атаку, то либо уже мало времени, либо действует усталость".

Макс Эйве: "Петросян не тигр, который прыгает на свою добычу, скорее он питон, который душит свою жертву, крокодил, который часами ждет удобный момент для нанесения решающего удара".

He was a good psychologist - Botvinnik and Spassky after the championship matches with him admitted that it was difficult for them to unbalance Petrosyan or foresee his plans. So, Boris Spassky said: “The advantage of Petrosyan is that his opponents never know when he will play as Mikhail Tal”

Hobbies, hobbies

He loved music of different styles - classical (favorite composers - Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Wagner), jazz, pop. Collected records, was interested in musical equipment, cinema - and shooting. When he was resting in his office in the country, he took off his hearing aid and turned on the music at full volume. He was a devoted fan of the football and hockey teams of Moscow Spartak. He played backgammon and table tennis. Favorite writer - Mikhail Lermontov, favorite actress - Natalie Wood.

Although the couple had a little two-room apartment in the capital, the Petrosyans liked living in a dacha near Moscow in the village of Barvikha. He loved gardening, eagerly fiddling in the summer garden.

He graduated from Yerevan Pedagogical Institute. V. Ya. Bryusov. In 1968, at Yerevan State University, under the direction of Academician Georg Brutyan, he defended his dissertation for the degree of candidate of philosophical sciences on the topic "Some problems of the logic of chess thinking" (Russian. Some problems of the logic of chess thinking). In the same year, he published a book in Armenian "Chess and Philosophy" in Yerevan (Շախմատը և փիլիսոփայությունը).

Famous parties

Although Petrosyan played hundreds of games with the strongest chess players, some of them are considered classic examples of his strength and style of play. Several winning games were selected against the leading players, which the grandmaster himself singled out (they were included in the collection of his games) and which were repeatedly reprinted in chess publications.

• Fisher - Petrosyan, tournament of applicants, Bled - Zagreb - Belgrade, 1959. The second meeting behind the chessboard of the American geek and an already experienced Soviet chess player. Petrosyan owned the initiative throughout the game, gradually increasing his advantage, forcing Fisher to appear in the endgame.

• Petrosyan - Botvinnik, 5th game of the World Championship match, Moscow, 1963. Petrosian’s first victory over Botvinnik in official meetings allowed him to even the match score for the world title. In this game, Tigran Petrosyan had previously underestimated the option of defending Ґrünfeld, and in the middlegame, with an unexpected pawn move, he sharpened the game, winning the pawn and opening the c-line.

• Petrosyan - Spassky, 10th game of the World Championship match, Moscow, 1966. Recognized as the second best half-year game according to the Šahovski informator magazine. The classic “Petrosyanovskaya” game aimed at restricting the opponent’s position is black, despite a significant material advantage, defenseless and closed in their camp.

• Polugaevsky - Petrosyan, the first game of the USSR championship title, Moscow, 1970. Black captured the center, limited the possibilities of white pieces and transferred the game to a winning ending. Entered the top ten games of the half a year according to the Šahovski informator magazine.

• Petrosyan - Korchnoi, 9th game of the semifinal match of the applicants, Moscow, 1971. Petrosyan habitually passively plays the opening, is not in a hurry to attack, he waits for the opponent’s mistakes and breaks through Black’s defense sharply with several precise moves in the middle of the game. Recognized as the third best half-year game according to the Šahovski informator magazine.

• Petrosyan - Fischer, 2nd game of the final match of the applicants, Buenos Aires, 1971. The Soviet chess player brilliantly played the game and used the occasion from the inaccurate moves of the American. The second best half-year batch according to the Šahovski informator magazine.

• Kasparov - Petrosyan, Moscow, 1981. Party with the world youth champion 17-year-old Garry Kasparov, who became one of the winners of the Moscow tournament, and a few years later received the world men's title. In it, Petrosyan defended himself for a long time, until Kasparov made a gross mistake during the 35th, which allowed Black to seize the initiative and force Kasparov to surrender with a few strong moves.

Memory

After receiving the world title, Petrosyan became perhaps the most popular athlete in Armenia, and chess has become extremely widespread. The name Tigran has also grown in popularity, for example, one of the country's most powerful modern chess players, Tigran Levonovich Petrosyan, who was born in 1984 shortly after the death of an ex-world champion, was named in his honor. In the late 1980s, representatives of the republic won the title of champion of the USSR for the first time, and after gaining independence, Armenia regularly receives medals at chess Olympiads and team world and European championships. Since the academic year 2011/12, in Armenian schools, chess is a compulsory subject for study in grades 2-4. As of 2018, Armenia has more grandmasters than England or the Netherlands and is one of the first in the world in the number of grandmasters per capita.

Since 1984, chess tournaments in memory of Petrosyan have been held in Yerevan, since 1987 in Moscow - youth tournaments in memory of Petrosyan.

In 1984, the Chess House in Yerevan (50a Khanjyan St.) was named after Petrosyan, the grandmaster laid the symbolic first foundation stone of which. In the square next to it stands a bronze bust of the grandmaster by sculptor Ara Shiraz, opened in 1989 (bronze, granite). A street in Yerevan is named after Petrosyan, on which is a monument to the ex-world champion of authorship Norayr Kahramanyan. In the Armenian city of Aparan on Tigran Petrosyan Square there is a monument to the chess player of authorship Misha Margaryan.

One of the Moscow clubs where the grandmaster played - the former chess club of the Spartak society - was named after him after Petrosyan’s death. T.V. Petrosyan (Bolshaya Dmitrovka St.). The Tallinn Chess Academy named after Tigran Petrosyan (Estonian Tigran Petrosjani nimelises Tallinna Malekadeemis) operates in the capital of Estonia.

In 1999, Moscow hosted the Petrosyan Memorial, which went down in history as the “most draw tournament” at the highest level - 42 of the 45 games ended in a draw, and all the participants were grandmasters (among them Vasily Smyslov, Boris Spassky, Svetozar Gligorich, Bent Larsen and others). FIDE declared 2004 the “Year of Petrosyan”, a match-tournament between the “Petrosyan team” took place in Moscow, which included the Armenian grandmasters Hakobyan, Vaganyan, Lputyan, as well as Kasparov (maternal Armenian), Leko (his wife and trainer are Armenians) and Gelfand (in childhood, trained under the leadership of Petrosyan), and the “national team” (Anand, Svidler, Bacrot, Van Veli, Adams and Vallejo). In December 2004, at the end of the Year of Petrosyan, a team Internet tournament was held on four chessboards between the teams of Armenia, China, Russia and France. Teams led. respectively, Aronian, Boo, Svidler and Lotє. 2009, FIDE released the Tigran Petrosyan Medal, which is awarded for coaching achievements.

The chess player was depicted on Armenian stamps, in 1999 he minted a silver commemorative coin of 5000 drams on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Petrosyan. From 2018, the portrait of Tigran Petrosyan will be on the Armenian banknote of 2000 drams.