Valery Salov

Valery Salov (born May 26, 1964 in Wrocław, Poland) is a Russian chess grandmaster who was once ranked the third best player in the world.

Salov was awarded the International Master title in 1984 and the Grandmaster title in 1986. He was the World under-17 Champion in 1980 and the European Junior Champion in 1983–84. He shared first place with Alexander Beliavsky in the 1987 USSR Championship, but he lost the tiebreaker match with Beliavsky (+0−2=2). At the 1988 USSR Championship he finished tied for third with Artur Yusupov, behind Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.

He qualified twice for the Candidates Tournament for the World Chess Championship. In the 1988 Candidates Tournament for the 1990 Classical Chess World Championship he was defeated in the round of 16 (the first match) by Jan Timman (+0−1=5). In the Candidates Tournament for the 1996 FIDE World Chess Championship he won his first two matches against Alexander Khalifman (+4-0=2) and Jan Timman (+2-1=5) to reach the quarterfinals, where he was defeated by Gata Kamsky (+0-4=3).