 The website Chessmetrics.com, which provides retroactive ratings for older players, ranks him as 11th in the world in 1945.So, his best results in the Soviet national championships, which during that period were the strongest tournaments in the world, were four times in the top six (1937, 1945, 1948, 1950).In any virtually other nation in the world during that period, he would have been its national champion, and an almost certain Grandmaster.