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Lev Psakhis

Lev Psakhis is an Israeli chess grandmaster, trainer and author who twice won the championship of the Soviet Union.

born 1958Two Soviet Chess Championship titlesBooks on the French DefenceTraining Kasparov and other chess players

Born: 29 November 1958, Tver
Occupation: chess player, non-fiction writer

Lev Psakhis was born in 1958 in Tver

Lev Borisovich Psakhis was born on 29 November 1958 in the Soviet Union. He later immigrated to Israel in the 1990s.

He became an International Master in 1980 and a Grandmaster in 1982. He won the Soviet Championship in 1980, shared with Alexander Beliavsky, and in 1981, shared with Garry Kasparov. He also won team and individual gold for the Soviet team at the 1983 European Team Championship in Plovdiv.

For Israel he won the national title in 1997 and shared it in 1999. He played in 7 Chess Olympiads between 1990 and 2002 and took board 4 gold at Batumi in 1999. He won or shared first place in tournaments such as Sarajevo 1981, Cienfuegos 1983 and Andorra 2002.

He worked as a trainer for Kasparov and Artur Yusupov in the late 1980s, and later helped Susan Polgar, Judit Polgár, Daniel Naroditsky and Emil Sutovsky. He wrote books on the French Defence and the Benoni, including a 4-volume work on the French. In 2011 he had a liver transplant and then returned to chess.