Victor Soultanbeieff

Soultanbéieff was known for his aggressive playing style, which sometimes resulted in short, brilliant games, but which sometimes led to unnecessary defeat. Some of his games are still famous like his games against Liubarski, 1928 or Borodin, 1943. Unlike many other players, Soultanbéieff stayed true to his attacking style when he grew old. He left his name to the Soultanbeieff Variation, a line in the Slav Defense which was introduced in the correspondence game Macht–Soultanbéieff, 1931–2: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 e6.[3][4][5]

Although he had won a few tournaments in Russia, his chess career only took off when he came to Belgium. He participated in a total of 22 Belgian championships[6] between 1923 and 1969. He won it 5 times (1932 (shared with Boruch Israel Dyner), 1934, 1943, 1957*, 1961*), took 3 times 2nd place (1938 (Shared with Arthur Dunkelblum), 1945*, 1958*) and one time 3rd place (1962). (Tournaments marks with * were FBE-championships.)

Due to his professional activities, international tournaments were rare. Nevertheless, he achieved some remarkable results, which are contained in the following table:

Being one of the best Belgian players of his time, he represented Belgium on various occasions, notably on the 1933 Chess Olympiad in Folkestone.[15] Playing on 1st board, he achieved 4/14, including a victory over Savielly Tartakower.

During his long career, Soultanbéieff played a few short matches. His most notable results in this category were a drawn match against Arthur Dunkelblum (1932; +1−1=2), a drawn match against Georges Koltanowski (1935; +1−1=2) and a lost match against Paul Devos (1946; +1−2=3).

Soultanbéieff was a gifted correspondence player too, although again, his professional activities left not much time for this. He started playing correspondence chess tournaments when he was still in Russia. He became first a member, later an honorary member of the EB/BS. He played 1st board for Belgium I in the first correspondence chess Olympiad, scoring 3/6. Another notable result was a drawn match against Aleksandras Machtas, future champion of Lithuania.

Like many chess players, Soultanbéieff also wrote about chess. He wrote a chess column for various local newspapers and collaborated with many outstanding chess periodicals like Shakmati Listock (later Shakhmaty v SSSR), l'Échiquier Belge and Échec et Mat. He wrote a book on the world championship match between José Raúl Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine, which appeared in 1929, published by l'Échiquier editions. He commented the games of the Ostend 1936 tournament for the tournament book and published a collection of his own games under the title Guide pratique du jeu des combinaisons, which was later reprinted as le Maître de l'attaque.