Ulf Andersson

At his peak, Andersson reached number four on the FIDE rating list. Tournaments he has won or shared first include the 1969 Swedish Chess Championship, Göteborg 1971, Dortmund 1973, Camagüez 1974, Cienfuegos 1975, Belgrade 1977, Buenos Aires 1978, Hastings 1978–79, Phillips & Drew 1980, Johannesburg 1981, Phillips & Drew 1982, Turin 1982, Wijk aan Zee 1983, Reggio Emilia 1985, Rome 1985, and Rome 1986. He drew a six-game match against former world champion Mikhail Tal in 1983, and played top board in the second USSR versus The Rest of The World Match in 1984. He led the Swedish Chess Olympiad Team during the 1970s and 1980s, and reached his best personal result in the 23rd Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires 1978, where he finished in third place after Viktor Korchnoi and Orestes Rodríguez Vargas.[2] Now in his 70s, he still participates in tournaments from time to time.

Andersson is a very solid positional player. He draws a high percentage of his games against fellow grandmasters (Kaufeld & Kern 2011:12). He is renowned as a great player of endgames, especially rook endgames, and is famous for winning seemingly "unwinnable" endgames, often in very long games (Kaufeld & Kern 2011:167). Jacob Aagaard wrote about Andersson in his book Excelling at Chess stating "He is a very prophylactic player, seeing all kinds of tactics well in advance and avoiding pitfalls with great skill." Chess writer Dennis Monokroussos once remarked of Andersson's style,

For most of us, if we're playing a peer and major exchanges occur, a quick draw is the likely result ... for Andersson ... exchanges [are] often not the prelude to a quick draw but the signal that it [is] time for his opponent to start suffering.[3]

In recent years, Andersson has begun playing correspondence chess, quickly becoming a grandmaster in that form of chess as well. In 2002, he reached the top of the correspondence chess rating list (Kaufeld & Kern 2011:11). His correspondence games tend to be very tactical, which contrasts sharply with his style of play over the board. Very few players in history have been as successful as Andersson at both forms of chess.

In the following game, using the "hedgehog" formation he in part originated (characterized by a half-open c-file and pawns on a6, b6, d6, and e6, knights on d7 and f6, bishops on b7 and e7, a rook on c8, and kingside castling), Andersson inflicts upon Anatoly Karpov the latter's first loss as world champion:

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Position after 24.a3

Bibliography

• Kaufeld, Jurgen; Kern, Guido (2011), Grandmaster Chess Strategy: What amateurs can learn from Ulf Andersson's positional masterpieces, New in Chess, ISBN 978-90-5691-346-5

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ulf Andersson.

• Ulf Andersson rating card at FIDE
• Ulf Andersson player details at ICCF
• Ulf Andersson player profile and games at Chessgames.com
• Ulf Andersson member profile at the Internet Chess Club
• Ulf Andersson Chess Olympiad record at OlimpBase.org