Alexey Pavlovich Sokolsky (5 November 1908-27 December 1969) was a Ukrainian

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

-Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

ian chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 player of International Master strength in over-the board chess, a noted correspondence chess

Correspondence chess

Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, usually through a correspondence chess server, through email or by the postal system; less common methods which have been employed include fax and homing pigeon...

 player, and an opening

Chess opening

A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...

 theoretician

Chess theory

The game of chess is commonly divided into three phases: the opening, middlegame, and endgame. As to each of these phases, especially the opening and endgame, there is a large body of theory as how the game should be played...

.

In 1935, he took second in the Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n FSSR. He was twice Ukrainian Champion (1947 and 1948), and was Belarus Sub-Champion in 1958. He also played in the 13th Soviet Championship

USSR Chess Championship

This is a list of all the winners of the USSR Chess Championship. It was the strongest national chess championship ever held, with eight world chess champions and four world championship finalists among its winners...

 in 1944, finishing with 7.5/16 (tie for 8th-10th place); the 17th Championship in 1949, finishing with 8.5/19 (12th place); and the 21st Championship in 1954, finishing last with 5/19.

He was the first Soviet Correspondence Chess

Correspondence chess

Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, usually through a correspondence chess server, through email or by the postal system; less common methods which have been employed include fax and homing pigeon...

 Champion (1948–51).

The name of Sokolsky is known now mostly due to his opening research and development of the chess opening

Chess opening

A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...

 1.b4 which became known as Sokolsky Opening

Sokolsky Opening

The Sokolsky Opening is an uncommon chess opening:According to various databases, out of the twenty possible first moves from White, 1.b4 ranks ninth in popularity...

. It is also known as the Polish Opening, or the Orangutan Opening, the name Savielly Tartakower

Savielly Tartakower

Ksawery Tartakower was a leading Polish and French chess Grandmaster. He was also a leading chess journalist of the 1920s and 30s...

 gave it in 1924.

Sokolsky Memorial master-norm tournaments have been held regularly in Minsk

Minsk

- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...

 since 1970.

Sokolsky wrote over a dozen books. The most famous of these are The Modern Openings in Theory and Practice (1962) and Debyut 1b2-b4 (1963), a book about his eponym

Eponym

An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

ous opening.

External links