Just came across this in the bottom of a box of post-divorce books in storage. Vatnikov was living in Western MA and gave a simul in Longmeadow where I was living at the time.
This is the book that IM Vatnikov self-published in 2005. I met him and bought the book when I played in my first simul. He autographed it for me…after he crushed me in the simul. The forward is written by Vassily Smyslov. Smyslov writes that Vatnikov was the coach and head of the Moscow State University chess club for 25 years. There is a photo of the two of them standing in a transport car at the mouth of a coal mine ready to go down into the mine on the invitation of the miners, presumably to play a simul. Vatnikov fought and was wounded in the Battle of Stalingrad. The book is dedicated to his parents, grandparents and two others, Riva and Chaim, who died at the hands of the Nazis during WWII.
