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Wang Hao – A chess career
The Chinese Grandmaster Wang Hao was born on 4 August 1989 in Harbin and started playing tournament chess at a very early age. In 1999 he won the bronze medal at the U10 World Championship and in the 2002 U16 Chess Olympiad he won gold with the Chinese team, as he did in the 2004 U16 Chess Olympiad. With a score of 8 out of 9 he also won gold for the best result on board one in this tournament.
In 2005, Wang Hao surprisingly won the Dubai Open as an untitled player, finishing ahead of 53 Grandmasters and 30 International Masters. In 2005 he also won the 2nd Dato Arthur Tan Open in Kuala Lumpur, and at the end of year he finished first at the Zonal Tournament in Beijing.
Airthings Masters | chess24
The second event on the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour is also the first Major, with a $200,000 prize fund. The winner gets $60,000 and a guaranteed place in the Grand Final. Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Skilling Open winner Wesley So are among the 12-player field, which will be reduced to 8 players by a 3-day preliminary stage. The remaining players will battle it out in a knockout that takes us into 2021.
January 16 – 31 |
Tata Steel Masters | Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands
This year’s 83rd edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament has been cut to just the main event due to COVID-19, but if everything goes as planned that will still mean a 14-player round-robin featuring Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from the world’s Top 5 and a host of young talents that include 17-year-old Alireza Firouzja.
€19.95
Lausanne, 15 December 2020 The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has signed a contract with
IOM International Chess Limited to organise and host the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss and the inaugural FIDE Chess.com Women’s Grand Swiss. Subject to COVID-19 restrictions being lifted in time, the tournaments will be held concurrently in the magnificent Royal Hall of the Villa Marina in Douglas, Isle of Man from 25 October to 8 November 2021. There will be 164 players from approximately 35 countries and a combined prize fund of USD 550,000, made possible by the generosity of the Scheinberg family.
The FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss is returning to the island after a successful first edition held in 2019. The 2021 edition will have a field of 114 players, mainly from the world’s top-100, and is expected to be one of the strongest Swiss events ever held in the history of chess. The prize fund will be USD 425,000, including the first prize of USD 70,000. J
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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.