Vsevolod Rauzer


Vsevolod Alfredovich Rauzer was a Soviet Ukrainian chess master known for his great contributions to chess opening theory, especially of the Sicilian Defence.

Achievements

Vsevolod Rauzer tied for first in the 1927 Ukrainian Chess Championship with Alexey Selezniev, but lost the playoff to Selezniev. Eventually, he took the Ukrainian Champion title. He was the joint Ukrainian Champion in 1933. He took sixth at Leningrad 1933, the 8th USSR Chess Championship, won by future World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. Rauzer finished fifth at Leningrad 1935, won by Vasily Panov, and shared first and second place with Vitaly Chekhover at Leningrad 1936, which was an eight-man double Round-robin tournament. At another eight man double round-robin in Leningrad in 1936, he scored clear first, a half point ahead of Viacheslav Ragozin and a full two points ahead of Grigory Levenfish. Rauzer's greatest tournament success came at the USSR Championship in Tbilisi in 1937, where he scored 12 out of 19, only half a point behind tournament winner Grigory Levenfish. Based on these latter two results, the website Chessmetrics.com estimates Rauzer's peak rating at 2627 and ranks him as 22nd in the world in mid-1937. Rauzer played very little or not at all after 1937 due to mental problems. He was confined to a psychiatric hospital at the end of 1940 and died the next year in the Siege of Leningrad.

Opening Contributions

Vsevolod Rauzer is probably best known for his extensive chess opening theory. The Richter–Rauzer Variation of the Sicilian Defence, was named in honor of him and the German master Kurt Richter.
The ECO code for the Richter–Rauzer attack is B60.
Rauzer did pioneering work in methods of attacking the Sicilian Dragon by castling queenside. His efforts in this area predate the famed Yugoslav Attack in the Dragon by at least fifteen years. As late as the mid-1950s, Soviet chess literature frequently called the Yugoslav Attack the Rauzer Attack in honor of his pioneering efforts.
In The Ruy Lopez Chigorin Variation, the approach where White exchanges pawns at e5 or c5 and then directs a knight into d5 is also known as The Rauzer Attack. The knight typically travels on the circuit b1-d2-f1-e3-d5 and this attack can be powerful even if it results in a sacrifice of White's e-pawn. This plan has been successfully adopted over the years by many strong Grandmasters, including Bobby Fischer.