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 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.

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.

Other players born before the revolution, such as Alexander Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubov, and Akiba Rubinstein were all allowed to travel and even ended up living abroad.

Deprived of the same opportunities, Levenfish played only within the confines of Soviet Russia and supplemented his income with a job as an engineer in the glass industry.

Genna Sosonko, in his book Russian Silhouettes, echoes the thoughts of some grandmasters who knew him, and they speak of a man of integrity and independence, who never complained about his difficult living conditions.

Levenfish defeated virtually all of the top Russian and Soviet players from the 1910s to the early 1950s, and beat world champions Alexander Alekhine and Emanuel Lasker as well.