In 1914 he won the city championship of Yekaterinoslav, his home town, but soon found himself spending three years in the trenches in World War I. After the war was over he again won the city championship in 1918. Then came the Russian Revolution and he was back in the army serving in the Imperial Russian Army under the commanding general of the anti-Bolshevik White Army in Southern Russia, General Pyotr Wrangel.
After his side lost the civil war in 1920, Wrangel, who had lost half of his standing army, organized a mass evacuation on the shores of the Black Sea and gave every officer, soldier, and civilian the choice to evacuate and go with him into the unknown, or remain in Russia and face the wrath of the Red Army. The White forces evacuated from the Crimea in 1920 in remnants of the Russian Imperial Navy that became known as Wrangel's fleet. And, that’s how Soultanbeieff ended up in Gallipoli in southern Italy.
At the end of 1921 he sought asylum in Belgium and after a short stay in Brussels he moved to Liege, where he would stay for the rest of his life. In civilian life he became an industrial chemist.
In 1923 he participated for the first time in the Belgian Chess Championship and finished 4eth, but impressed everyone with his play. He would go on to play in 22 Belgian championships and win it five times: 1932 tied with Dyner, 1934, 1943, 1957, and 1961.
As he had to combine chess with his work, his international play was limited. He became a national master in 1931 and International Arbiter in 1964. Soultanbeieff played a few short matches, drawing a match against Arthur Dunkelblum in 1932 and George Koltanowski in 1935. In 1946 he lost a match to Paul Devos.
Soultanbeieff was a gifted correspondence player, but here too he did not devote much time to the endeavor. He started playing in correspondence tournaments when he was still in Russia and played 1st board for Belgium in the first correspondence chess Olympiad, scoring 3 points out of six. Another notable result was a drawn match against Aleksandras Machtas, future champion of Lithuania.
Soultanbeieff also wrote a chess column for various local newspapers and collaborated with many outstanding chess periodicals like Shakmati Listock (later Shakhmaty v SSSR), l'Échiquier Belge and Échec et Mat. He wrote a book on the world championship match between Capablanca and Alekhine. He also commented the games of the Ostend 1936 tournament for the tournament book and published a collection of his own games under the title Guide pratique du jeu des combinaisons, which was later reprinted as le Maître de l'attaque. Chessmetrics estimates his rating in the mid-1930s to have been in the mid-2400s.
One of Soultanbeieff's best known games is probably the one he played against Defosse given in the Chandler Cornered article HERE.
His opponent, Arthur Dunkelblum (23 April 1906 – 27 January 1979,) was a Polish-born Belgian chess master. Arthur Dunkelblum was born in Cracow (Kraków-Podgórze), Austria-Hungary. He played for Belgium in eleven Chess Olympiads: 1928, 1933, 1937, 1950, 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1966, and 1968. He had good results in minor European tournaments, but never managed to win the Belgian championship.
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| Dunkleblum |
Dunkelblum is frequently given as the name of the player who lost two of the most frequently published games featuring George Koltanowski...see Edward Winter’s post.
The following game was played in the Belgian resort of Spa which is 22 miles southeast of Liege and is one of Belgium's main tourist cities famous for its several natural mineral springs. Marcel Barzin of Belgium actually played under his pseudonym of Varlin. Soultanbeieff (Russia), Sapira (Romania) and Dunkelblum (Poland) were all immigrants.
1-2) Fritz Saemisch and Sir George Thomas 8.5
3) Emanuel Sapira 8.0
4) Savielly Tartakower 7.0
5-7) Arthur Dunkelblum, Massimiliano Romih, Massimiliano and Victor Soultanbeieff 6.0
8) Jacques Davidson 5.0
9) Georges Koltanowski 4.5
10) Andre Tackels 3.0
11) Marcel Barzin 2.5
12) Marcel Lenglez 1.0
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