Sergey Karjakin - Rise To The Top

Rise To The Top

During the Chess World Cup 2007, which served as a qualification tournament for the World Chess Championship 2009, Karjakin reached the semi-finals, in which he lost to Alexei Shirov. On the January 2008 FIDE rating list, published just before Karjakin's eighteenth birthday, he passed the 2700 mark for the first time, often seen as the line that separates "elite" players from other grandmasters, with a new rating of 2732 and a world rank of 13.

In July 2008 Karjakin played a ten game rapid chess match against GM Nigel Short and won convincingly with a score of 7.5-2.5. In February 2009 he won the A group of the Corus chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee (category XIX) with a score of 8/13.

Later he also won the ACP World Rapid Cup which was conducted from 27 May to 29 May 2010. He defeated Dmitry Jakovenko in the final game by 4-3.

In November 2011 Karjakin tied for 3rd–5th with Vassily Ivanchuk and Ian Nepomniachtchi in the category 22 Tal Memorial in Moscow.

In July 2012 Karjakin won the World Rapid Chess Championship a full point ahead of world number one Magnus Carlsen in Astana, Kazakhstan. In the same month, he also tied for first at Dortmund with Fabiano Caruana but came in second after tiebreak.