Happy Birthday Valery Salov
There are seven Grandmasters who were born on "This Day in Chess History."
- Yaacov Zilberman of Israel, born 1954, GM 1998.
- Valery Salov of Russia, born 1964, GM 1986.
- Friso Nijboer of the Netherlands, born 1965, GM 1993.
- Alexander Kalinin of Russia, born 1968, GM 2001.
- Mikulas Manik of Slovakia, born 1975, GM 2006.
- Grigor Grigorov of Bulgaria, born 1987, GM 2011.
- Vahap Şanal of Turkey, born 1998, GM 2016.
Valery Salov (born 26 May 1964) is a Russian chess grandmaster who was once ranked the third best player in the world. Salov was awarded the International Master title in 1984 and the Grandmaster title in 1986. He was the World under-17 Champion in 1980 and the European Junior Champion in 1983–84. He shared first place in the 1987 USSR Championship.
After 1988 Valeri went from one success to another and by the mid-90’s he already had a 2700-plus rating. His play seemed to be a combination of Fischer and Karpov. His strength as a player rivaled both Kasparov and Karpov in the mid-90’s. In 1994 Valeri won, back to back, both Tilburg and the Najdorf Memorial. In the latter, a double round tournament , he defeated Karpov with both colours!
Unfortunately, He has not played any FIDE-rated tournaments since January 2000. He started to get fewer and fewer tournament invitations! He complained in the media that both Karpov and Kasparov were trying to kill his career and were blocking his participation in top level chess. Gradually, Salov’s tournament invitations disappeared and now he is involved with political economy at universities near Madrid.
