Rafael Vaganian was born on 15 October 1951 in Yerevan, at that time the capital of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. His father, a physicist by profession, was a keen chess player and taught his son the game when he was five years old.
At the age of 15, he defeated former world champion Max Euwe in a simultaneous exhibition:
At 16, Vaganian became Soviet school champion, and at 18 he won an international youth tournament in Groningen, finishing level on points with Germany's Karl-Heinz Maeder and Hungary's Zoltan Ribli. At the time, Vaganian, together with the equally aged Anatoly Karpov and the prematurely deceased Mikhail Steinberg, was regarded as one of the greatest chess talents in the USSR.
In November 1970, Vaganian made his debut in the USSR Championships. After winning a strong grandmaster tournament in Vrnjacka Banja in 1971, ahead of, among others, Leonid Stein, Ljubomir Ljubojevic and Borislav Ivkov, FIDE awarded the 20-year-old Vaganian the grandmaster title directly, without his having previously held the title of international master. Vaganian was the first Armenian to receive this distinction. For decades afterwards, he was Armenia's strongest player.
In the consistently strong USSR Championships, Vaganian achieved several high finishes, including joint 3rd-5th in 1974, joint 2nd-5th in 1975 and joint 3rd-4th in 1982/83. In 1989, he finally won the USSR Championship.
Over the course of his career, Vaganian won countless tournaments, including Rome 1977, São Paulo 1977, Kirovakan 1978, Las Palmas 1979, Manila 1981, Moscow 1982, Hastings 1982/83, Tallinn 1983 and Lvov 1984.
Rafael Vaganian in 1984
He also won in Næstved in 1985, Sochi in 1986, Marseille in 1987, Leningrad in 1987, Esbjerg in 1988, Copenhagen in 1988, Toronto in 1990, Moscow in 1991, Ter Apel in 1992, Neu-Isenburg in 1992, Reggio Emilia in 1991, Ter Apel in 1993, Haarlem in 1993, Long Beach in 1994, Reggio Emilia in 1994/95 and Moscow in 1995 at the Aeroflot Open. Vaganian also achieved podium finishes or at least high placings in many other strong tournaments.
Vaganian's greatest tournament success was winning the 1985 Interzonal in Biel. At the subsequent Candidates Tournament in Montpellier, he finished joint first with Artur Yusupov and Andrei Sokolov, who had the same score, and reached the knockout stage of the Candidates matches for the World Championship, but was eliminated in the first round by Andrei Sokolov.
In the next World Championship cycle, Vaganian again qualified for the Candidates matches, but this time, in Saint John in 1988, he was eliminated by Lajos Portisch. A few days later at the same venue, he finished runner-up in the World Blitz Championship after losing to Mikhail Tal in the final match.
In the 1984 revival of the USSR v. Rest of the World match, Vaganian was selected for the Soviet team, but lost 1½-2½ to Zoltan Ribli on board five.
From 1984 to 1986, Vaganian was among the world's very best players, with a peak rating of 2645 in January 1986. This placed him fourth in the world rankings behind Kasparov, Karpov and Timman.
In 1994, Vaganian won the World Open in Philadelphia, and in 2004 he finished level on points with winner Sergei Rublevsky at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow.
His debut for the Soviet team at the Chess Olympiads came in Buenos Aires in 1978. The Soviet team was pushed into second place by Hungary and, unusually, won only silver. In 1984 and 1986, Vaganian won the gold medal with the Soviet team. In Thessaloniki in 1984, Vaganian was also the second-best player in the tournament by performance rating, behind John Nunn, and additionally won the individual gold medal on board three. From 1992 to 2004, Vaganian played for the team of independent Armenia, winning team bronze in 1992 and 2004, as well as individual gold on board three in 2004.
In addition, Vaganian won a number of team and individual medals with the Soviet team and later with Armenia at World Team Championships and European Team Championships.
Vaganian also took part in a number of national team championships. For many years, he played for Spartak Moscow in the Soviet team championships, later in Armenia for Bank King Yerevan in the Armenian championships, as well as in the Netherlands for Breda and for several years in the Russian Championship for Yekaterinburg. Vaganian also made a number of appearances in the Belgian and French leagues.
With Hou Yifan in Biel | Photo: Biel Chess Festival
From 1990, Vaganian played for SG Porz in the Bundesliga, winning a total of six championship titles with the club up to 2007. In 1996/97, Vaganian achieved the best result ever recorded by a player in a single Bundesliga season, scoring 14½ points from 15 games. From 1992, Rafael Vaganian and his family also lived in Porz for many years.
In 2016, Vaganian won the silver medal with the Armenian team at the World Senior Team Championship. In 2019, he received the gold medal at the World Senior Championship in the 65+ category.
Photo: FIDE
Since 2016, Vaganian has been the director of the Shengavit Youth Chess School in Yerevan.
Photo: Armchess
Vaganian has never been able to leave chess behind. Most recently, he has continued to take part in online tournaments, although not quite as successfully as in the past.
Vaganian also remains closely connected to Germany. Last year, he was a co-commentator at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting alongside Artur Yusupov in Dortmund.
Photo: Sparkassen Chess Meeting (Dortmund Chess Festival)
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