Post-championship Career
On Ponomariov's 20th birthday, October 11, 2003, he became the first high-profile player to forfeit a game because of his mobile phone ringing during play. This happened in round one of the European Team Championship in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, when Ponomariov was playing Black against Swedish GM Evgenij Agrest.
In 2004, Ruslan won the gold at the 2004 Chess Olympiad held in Calvià, Spain, with the Ukrainian team.
In 2005 he won the 15th edition of the Ciudad de Pamplona tournament. He also won a rapid tournament in Odessa, Ukraine, and the Golden Blitz Cup in Moscow. Finally, that year he reached the World Cup final against Levon Aronian, who won the final.
In 2006 he shared first place with Levon Aronian and Peter Leko in the Tal Memorial tournament in Moscow.
In 2009 he shared first place with Hikaru Nakamura at the Donostia Chess Festival in San Sebastian, Spain. The latter won the tie-break blitz games 2–0. Ruslan Ponomariov got one more second place by tie-break that year in the Khanty-Mansiysk World Cup, where he reached the final against Israeli Boris Gelfand. After four classic games, four rapid games, and two blitz games with a drawn score, Gelfand finally won in one last set of two blitz games.
In July 2010 Ruslan Ponomariov won the prestigious Sparkassen tournament in Dortmund, one point ahead of Le Quang Liem, from Vietnam. In September that year Ukraine won the gold once more at the 2010 Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk with players Vassily Ivanchuk, Ruslan Ponomariov, Pavel Eljanov, Zahar Efimenko, and Alexander Moiseenko.
In February 2011, after occupying an unfortunate last place at the World Blitz Championship in November 2010 in Moscow, GM Ponomariov showed great improvement at the strong Aeroflot Blitz held in the same city by reaching second place, just half a point behind Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.
In June 2011 he won the 80th Ukrainian Championship, the strongest ever in the country, with 8.5/11 and a performance rating of 2853.
Read more about this topic: Ruslan Ponomariov
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