Viktor Korchnoi

Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi (Виктор Львович Корчной; 23 March 1931 – 6 June 2016) was a Soviet-born Swiss grandmaster renowned as one of the strongest chess players never to become world champion. Born in Leningrad, he earned the grandmaster title in 1956 and won the USSR Chess Championship four times (1960, 1962, 1964–65, 1970).

Korchnoi defected from the Soviet Union in 1976 following the Amsterdam Interzonal Tournament, becoming stateless until gaining Swiss citizenship in 1980; his wife and son joined him after defecting in 1982. He qualified as world championship challenger twice, facing Anatoly Karpov in 1978 (Baguio, losing 6–5 after a tied score) and 1981 (Merano, losing 6–2). Known for his combative style with fewer draws than contemporaries and psychological tactics to unsettle opponents, Korchnoi demonstrated exceptional longevity, winning the World Senior Championship in 2006 at age 75 and remaining in the world top 100 into his later years, defeating players like Fabiano Caruana as late as 2011.

Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi was born on 23 March 1931 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), into a family of modest means with a Jewish mother who had trained as a pianist at the conservatory and a father of Polish-Catholic descent from minor nobility who worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature as well as a refrigeration engineer in a candy factory. His parents separated shortly after his birth, leading to the family's dissolution; Korchnoi was raised initially by his father and Polish grandmother, and later primarily by his stepmother after his father's remarriage.