Mikhail Gurevich (chess player)
Soviet-Belgian chess player
Mikhail Naumovich Gurevich (Russian: Михаил Наумович Гуревич, romanized: Mikhail Naumovich Gurevich; born 22 February 1959) is a Soviet-born Belgian chess player. He was a top ten ranked player from 1989 to 1991. Gurevich became an International Grandmaster in 1986, and is currently an FIDE arbiter and senior trainer.
Chess career
Early years
Gurevich won the Ukrainian Chess Championship in 1984 and became USSR Champion in 1985, controversially taking the title from co-winners Alexander Chernin and Viktor Gavrikov on tiebreak points' This was after a three-way playoff had been organized and all the game results were draws. He was not allowed to leave the country, however, to participate in the Interzonal, and Gavrikov and Chernin went in his place. According to Gurevich, a Jew, the KGB prevented his journey to the West while they expected he would defect to Israel.
Gurevich was awarded the International Master title in 1985, and became an International Grandmaster in 1986. In 1987 he was first at Moscow ahead of Oleg Romanishin and Sergey Dolmatov. He finished second at Leningrad after Rafael Vaganian, but ahead of Andrei Sokolov and Artur Yusupov.
Peak
At his peak, between 1989 and 1991, Gurevich was consistently ranked in the top ten players in the world.
The public source identifies “Mikhail Gurevich (chess player)” as soviet-Belgian chess player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mikhail, Gurevich and chess.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q506493. VIAF identifies the subject as 281901695. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1989, 1991 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mikhail Gurevich (chess player)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.