Alexander Morozevich - Career and Results

Career and Results

His first win in an international tournament was in 1994, when at the age of 17 he won the Lloyds Bank tournament in London with a 9½ out of 10 score. In 1994 he also won the Pamplona tournament, a victory he repeated in 1998.

In 1997 Morozevich was the top seed at the World Junior Chess Championship, but lost to the eventual champion, American Tal Shaked in a bishop and knight checkmate. That same year, Morozevich participated in the FIDE World Championship knockout tournament; in the first round he eliminated the ex-world champion Smyslov, but in the second round was eliminated by Lembit Oll.

In 1999 Morozevich played in his first super-tourney the Sarajevo Bosna and finished in fourth with 5½ points of 9.

In beginning of 2000 Morozevich participated at the Corus chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee and finished fifth out of 14 players. The event was won by Kasparov ahead of Kramnik, Anand and Leko.

In the same year he participated in the FIDE K.O. world championship played in New Delhi. Due to his rating he was seeded directly into the second round in which he eliminated Milos with the score of 2:0, then he proceeded to beat Evgeny Vladimirov 1½:½ in the third round before finally being eliminated in the fourth round by Vladislav Tkachiev.

In Wijk aan Zee 2001 Morozevich became the first player to defeat the newly crowned World Champion Vladimir Kramnik after beating him with black. He ended up shared fifth together with Shirov, behind Kasparov, Anand, Ivanchuk and Kramnik. In the 2001 FIDE K.O. championship played in his native Moscow Morozevich beat Zeliavok, Sasikiran and Gurevich before losing in tie-breaks in the fourth round against the eventual winner of the event Ponomariov.

In September 2005, Morozevich played in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 in San Luis, taking fourth place behind Veselin Topalov, Vishwanathan Anand and Peter Svidler.

In December 2006, he won the strong Ciudad de Pamplona tournament with a score of 6 (of 7) and an ELO performance of 2951. He shared second place with Magnus Carlsen behind Anand at the 2007 Linares tournament.

His San Luis result earned him direct entry to the World Chess Championship 2007. In that tournament he scored 6 out of 14, placing sixth out of eight players. He was the only player who managed to defeat the reigning world champion Vladimir Kramnik (which was also Kramnik's only defeat in 2007).

In December 2007 Morozevich won the Russian championship, during the tourney he scored a series of six consecutive wins, a rare event in competitions of that level.

In June 2008 Morozevich won the Bosna tournament with a margin of 1½ points ahead of second place.

In August 2008 Morozevich finished shared second-fifth in the Tal Memorial after leading the tournament in early rounds. While officially being fourth in the world, Morozevich unofficially climbed to the top spot of the world rating list, but fell back to fourth by the end of the tournament.

In June 2011 he won the Russian Higher League championship in Taganrog with 8/11, which allowed him to take part in the Russian Championship Super Final in August 2011, in which he came second behind the eventual winner Peter Svidler.

In October 2011 he won the Saratov Governor's Cup in Russia with 8.5/11, one and a half points ahead of the field, and a staggering 2917 performance.

In February 2012 Morozevich came first in the Vladimir Petrov Memorial, a rapid chess tournament with the time control of 15 minutes plus 6 seconds per move.