U.S. Open: Chess games, awards, signings, meetings chessbase.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chessbase.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
€29.90
An accomplished GM
Boris Gulko is a grandmaster, author and certified FIDE Senior Trainer who, at 30 years of age, won the USSR Championship in 1977 ahead of three world champions. He lost seven years of what could have been his best years of chess for being a “refusenik” before emigrating with his family to the United States, where Boris twice won the U.S. Championship, in 1994 and 1999. He played in the candidates in 1995 and 2000 and qualified to play at the 2004 World Chess Championship in Libya, but withdrew because of antisemitic remarks made by the organizer.
Boris has an impressive three win, one loss, and four draw record against Garry Kasparov. His result in Niksic 1978, where he and Jan Timman shared first 1½ points ahead of a very strong field put him in the spotlight.
€29.90
Dark horse
Before the 2020 Candidates Tournament began, Alekseenko was interviewed by the sports.ru website. According to an English translation of that interview, Alekseenko said, “I am satisfied with the role of a ‘dark horse’ in this tournament, no one expects great results from me and there is no additional pressure.”
Alekseenko learned chess at age 4, from his grandfather, and played in his first tournament at age 7. He had achieved grandmaster norms by 2012 and the rating necessary for the title in 2015. Compared to the seven other Candidates, Alekseenko is a relative unknown. His opponents will have a harder time preparing for him than he will have preparing for them. As he said in his sports.ru interview, “There is a lot of information about them, the same openings have been played for many years. And I have two times less games, and a few games with strong chess players, and there is no full-fledged repertoire you can play on this.”
€29.90
Instant grandmaster
As Diana Mihajlova’s thorough profile of Wang Hao (part one is here; part two is here) stated, Hao jumped from untitled to grandmaster “bypassing both the FM and IM titles.” Becoming a grandmaster at age 16 was a high point in Hao’s already impressive junior chess career. For example, at age 14, Hao won team gold and an individual gold as China’s first board in the Under-16 Olympiad.
2019 Grand Swiss
Wang Hao qualified for the 2020 Candidates Tournament by winning the 2019 FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss with 8 out of 11, on tiebreak over 2018 World Championship Challenger Fabiano Caruana and ahead of World Champion Magnus Carlsen, who tied for third place with 7.5.