Person of day   -  28 AUGUST 2023

ANDREY LUKIN

ANDREY LUKIN

Andrey Lukin was a student of Leningrad’s Pioneers’ Palace. In this legendary cauldron of talents, he trained with masters Cherepkov and Kirillov. In 1967, Andrey won a qualifying tournament for juniors and was supposed to play in the world championship.

“The championship was supposed to take place in August 1967, but everything was overruled by the Six-Day War. Every communist country except Romania severed relations with Israel and no one went to Jerusalem. 

The Soviet Union was supposed to be represented by Andrey Lukin, who won a tournament of young masters and with it the right to play in the world championship. Of course, it wasn’t certain that Andrey would win, but politics overruled chess and deprived him of the chance to try.

The junior world championship took place every two years and Lukin was too old to participate in the next one, which took place in Stockholm in 1969 and which was won by Anatoly Karpov.  

It would be unfair to say that Andrey’s career, which he started while he was at a technical university, was unsuccessful: the international master won five St Petersburg championships, trained Peter Svidler for many years and remains one of Russia’s leading trainers to this day. But who knows what Lukin’s chess path would have looked like if he was allowed to play in that world championship.” (G. Sosonko)

Andrey Lukin is the five-time champion of Leningrad. Only Mark Taimanov has the same number of victories in this competition. After his victory in Nałęczów in 1981 and success at a Leningrad tournament, he became an international master. In his younger years, Lukin was already a strong trainer and towards the end of the 1980s, he found a talented young student called Peter Svidler. In addition to his work with Svidler, he helped Konstantin Sakaev when the latter was young. He mentored multiple celebrated chess players, like Kirill Alexeenko and Vasily Usmanov, to name a few. He led Russia’s junior team in important competitions and he was a laureate of the “Trainer of the Year” award. He is a recognised trainer of Russia. 

He was a co-author of a book about grandmaster Konstantin Aseev.  

“I am an engineer who became a trainer out of necessity. The job is pretty thankless. Everything depends on the students. I was lucky with those. The most important thing in our profession is to work hard, with no holidays and no rest days. I work in the Chigorin Club. Hropov created a school for Olympians there after con-artists began to take over the city’s best chess clubs. And Boris organised the juniors’ school in such a way that it couldn’t be taken away.” (A. Lukin)