Today Armenian great chess player Levon Aronian celebrates his birthday. He is becoming 30 years old.
Levon Grigori Aronian was born on 6 October 1982 in Yerevan, Armenia, to Seda Sarkisovna, an Armenian mining engineer, and Grigory Leontievich, a Jewish physicist. He was taught to play chess by his sister Lilit at the age of nine. His first coach was the Grandmaster Melikset Khachiyan.
An early sign of his ability came when he won the 1994 World Youth Chess Championship (under-12) in Szeged with 8/9, ahead of future luminaries Étienne Bacrot, Ruslan Ponomariov, Francisco Vallejo Pons, and Alexander Grischuk.
Aronian has got various awards in various years. On the May 2012 FIDE list, he had an Elo rating of 2825, making him number two in the world[1] and third highest of all time.
Aronian won the Chess World Cup 2005. He led the Armenian national team to the Gold medals in the 2006 (Turin), 2008 (Dresden) and 2012 (Istanbul) Chess Olympics and at the World Team Chess Championship in Ningbo 2011. He won the FIDE Grand Prix 2008–2010, qualifying him for the Candidates tournament for the World Chess Championship 2012, where he was knocked out in the first round. He was also World Chess960 Champion in 2006 and 2007, World Rapid Chess Champion in 2009, and World Blitz Chess Champion in 2010.
Aronian was declared the best sportsman of Armenia in 2005 and was awarded the title of “Honoured Master of Sport of the Republic of Armenia” in 2009.
In January 2012, Aronian competed in the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee; the field included world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, defending champion Hikaru Nakamura, and former world champion Veselin Topalov, among others. The average rating of the field was 2755, making this thirteen-round event a category 21 tournament. After twelve rounds, Aronian was in clear first place with 8.5 points going into the final round, one point ahead of Carlsen and Teimour Radjabov.
In the final round, Aronian drew against Radjabov with the white pieces in the King’s Indian Defense. With the draw, Aronian finished with 9/13 (+5), a tournament performance rating of 2891, and took clear first place a point ahead of Carlsen, Radjabov and Fabiano Caruana.
Happy birthday, Levon! We wish you new great achievements in your career and happiness in personal life!
Source: http://times.am
Nakamura is clearly more talented.
Happy B’day Levon!!!Many many returns of the day!!!!!