Vasily Nikolayevich Panov (November 1, 1906 – January 13, 1973) was a Soviet 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, author, and journalist. Winner of the Moscow City Championship

Moscow City Chess Championship

-References: ****** from chessbase.com...

 in 1929, he also played in five USSR Chess 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...

s from 1935 to 1948. His greatest tournament victory was Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, 1938. Awarded the International Master title by FIDE in 1950, Panov is best known for his chess writings and theoretical work on the openings. He was chess correspondent for Izvestia from 1942 to 1965. His many books include a beginners' guide, biographies of Alekhine

Alexander Alekhine

Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...

 and Capablanca, and Kurs debyutov (1957), Russia's best-selling book on 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...

. Panov contributed greatly to the theory of the Caro-Kann Defence

Caro-Kann Defence

The Caro-Kann Defence is a chess opening —a common defense against the King's Pawn Opening characterised by the moves:The usual continuation isfollowed by 3.Nc3 , 3.Nd2 , 3.exd5 , or 3.e5 . The classical variation has gained much popularity...

 and the Ruy Lopez

Ruy Lopez

The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:The opening is named after the 16th century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del...

.

Books

• Comprehensive Chess Openings, by Yakov Estrin
  Yakov Estrin
  Yakov Borisovich Estrin was a Russian chess International Master, theoretician, and writer.After a brief foray into "over-the-board" play, he turned to correspondence chess in the early 1960s with immediate success Yakov Borisovich Estrin (April 21, 1923 – February 2, 1987) was a Russian chess...
  
   and Vasily Panov, in three volumes, Pergamon, 1980. ISBN 0-08-024113-1 (for set of three volumes in flexicover)

Further reading

• V. Panov, Sorok let za shakmatnoi doskoi (1966), an autobiography with 50 games
• Ya. B. Estrin
  Yakov Estrin
  Yakov Borisovich Estrin was a Russian chess International Master, theoretician, and writer.After a brief foray into "over-the-board" play, he turned to correspondence chess in the early 1960s with immediate success Yakov Borisovich Estrin (April 21, 1923 – February 2, 1987) was a Russian chess...
  
  , Vasily Panov (1986), 80 games