He was an international chess grand master and a long time contributor to the Washington Post.

Lubomir Kavalek was born in what was then Czechoslovakia.  He defected to the west in 1968 and was an assistant to Bobby Fischer when the American claimed the world chess championship from Soviet grand master Boris Spassky in a dramatic match that was seen as the Cold War being played out on a chess board in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1972.

Kavalek, who was known to friends as “Lubosh” was a three-time U.S. chess champion and wrote a chess column for the Post from 1995 to 2010.

Kavalek has died of lung cancer at his home in Reston Virginia at the age of 77.