Nicolas Spiridonovich Rossolimo

Nicolas Rossolimo (Russian: Николай Спиридонович Россоли́мо, romanized: Nikolai Spiridonovich Rossolimo; February 28, 1910 – July 24, 1975) was a Russian Empire-born chess player. After acquiring Greek citizenship in 1929, he was able to emigrate that year to France, and was many times chess champion of Paris. In 1952 he emigrated to the United States, and won the 1955 U.S. Open Chess Championship. He was awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1953. Rossolimo was a resident of New York City until his death.

Biography and chess career

Nikolai Spiridonovich Rossolimo was born into an upper-middle-class Russian-Greek family in Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was Spiridon Rossolimo, a Russian painter and portraitist of Greek ancestry, while his mother née Xenia Nikolaevna Skugarevskaya was an aristocratic writer and was correspondent. He was a nephew of the famous Russian neurologist and psychiatrist Grigory Ivanovich Rossolimo. He lived in Moscow during the mid-1920s, and moved to Paris with his Russian mother in 1929.

Having finished second behind former World Champion José Raúl Capablanca in a tournament in Paris in 1938, he won the French Championship in 1948. He was Paris champion a record seven times,[3] and drew two matches in 1948 and 1949 with Savielly Tartakower. In 1955, he won the U.S. Open Championship held in Long Beach, California, on tiebreaks ahead of Samuel Reshevsky. The prize was a new Buick automobile.

Rossolimo played for France in the Chess Olympiads of 1950 and 1972, and for the United States in 1958, 1960, and 1966.FIDE awarded him the International Master title in 1950 and the International Grandmaster title in 1953.

In 1952, he moved to the U.S. with his wife Véra and son Alexander to rejoin his mother and Russian-Greek father in New York. (After moving to the U.S., his first name was often spelled "Nicholas".) In New York, he worked as a waiter, a taxi driver, played the accordion, and worked as a singer and ran a chess studio as well to support himself and his family. The Rossolimo Chess Studio was located in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. It was somewhat like a café that served food and drinks, and also sold chess sets and books, but where members of the public – including famous artists such as Marcel Duchamp – could come and play chess with each other and occasionally play Rossolimo himself for a fee (Rossolimo would play simultaneous chess with many of the patrons).

Death

Rossolimo died of head injuries following a fall down a flight of stairs, just after finishing third in his final event, the 1975 World Open. He was buried in a Russian Orthodox cemetery in New Jersey.

The strongest players Rossolimo defeated were Efim Bogoljubov, David Bronstein, and former World Champion Max Euwe, against whom he had two wins and a lifetime plus score. He also scored draws against four world champions: José Capablanca, Max Euwe, Bobby Fischer, and Vassily Smyslov. According to the site Chessmetrics, which estimates historical ratings of players based on results, his highest ranking was 15th in the world, reached in December 1953.

Rossolimo won many brilliance and "best-game" prizes for his beautiful chess games, and has been called an "artist of chess".He has been quoted to have said (here in translation): "What am I supposed to do, trade in my romantic style and become a hunter of points at any price? No, I will not do that. I will fight for the art of chess. I shall not turn into a monster".

Others: On the Dutch Website arves.org are 9 endgame studies composed by him shown.