Grigory Yakovlevich Levenfish (; – 9 February 1961) was a Soviet chess player who scored his peak competitive results in the 1920s and 1930s. He was twice Soviet champion, in 1934 (jointly with Ilya Rabinovich) and 1937. In 1937 he drew a match against future world champion Mikhail Botvinnik. In 1950 Levenfish was among the first recipients of the title of Grandmaster, awarded by FIDE that year for the first time. Early life and education Levenfish was born in Piotrków, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, to Jacob Levenfish and Golda Levenfish (née Finkelstein). He spent most of his formative years in St. Petersburg, where he attended Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology and studied chemical engineering. Early chess achievements His earliest recognition as a prominent chess player came when he won the St. Petersburg championship of 1909, and played in the strong Carlsbad tournament of 1911, where he scored 11½ points from 25 games. At age 22, this was to be his first and last tournament outside Russia or the Soviet Union. His play at the time was compared to that of Mikhail Chigorin. In the next decade, he won the Leningrad Championships of 1922, 1924, and 1925 (jointly). Soviet Championship At a national level, he finished on the podium at the Soviet Championship on four occasions; third in 1920, second in 1923, co-champion at Leningrad in 1934 (tied with Ilya Rabinovich at 12/19), and outright champion at Tbilisi in 1937 with a score of 12½/19 points. In the Moscow International tournament of 1935, he scored 10½/19 points to tie for 6th–7th places, as Mikhail Botvinnik and Salo Flohr won. In a Soviet-only tournament at Leningrad 1936, he was third with 8½/14. Participation in the Leningrad–Moscow training tournament of 1939 resulted in a shared 3rd–6th-place finish, with a score of 10/17, behind winner Flohr and Samuel Reshevsky. In match play, he drew with Botvinnik in 1937 over 13 games, and beat Vladimir Alatortsev in 1940. Lack of support and recognition Despite his successes, Levenfish was virtually ignored by the Soviet chess authorities, who gave their full blessing to the young rising star and committed communist Botvinnik. He was the only strong Soviet master of his generation who was denied a stipend. This meant that he could only afford a poorly heated room in a run-down block of flats. Furthermore, the government refused him permission to travel abroad and