Levon Aronian

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Levon Aronian, 2005

Levon Aronian (born October 6, 1982) is an Armenian chess player. On the October 2006 FIDE list, he had an Elo rating of 2741, making him number seven in the world and Armenia's number one.

In December 2005 Levon beat Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine in the final round to win the World Cup in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia. After a draw in two regular games, Levon won both Rapid games to win the event and emerge undefeated in seven rounds.

In March 2006 he took sole first place at the annual Linares chess tournament, half a point ahead of Teimour Radjabov and FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov.

An early sign of his ability came when he won the 1994 World Under-12 championship in Szeged with 8/9, ahead of future luminaries including Etienne Bacrot, Ruslan Ponomariov, Francisco Vallejo Pons and Alexander Grischuk. In 2002 he became World Junior Champion, scoring 10/13 and finishing ahead of Luke McShane, Surya Ganguly, Artyom Timofeev, Bu Xiangzhi, Pentala Harikrishna and others.

In 2004 he progressed to the 3rd round of the 2004 FIDE World Championship before being knocked out by Pavel Smirnov. In 2005 he was part of a five-way tie for first place at the Gibtele.com Masters in Gibraltar with Zahar Efimenko, Kiril Georgiev, Alexei Shirov and Emil Sutovsky. In the 2005 Russian Team Championship, he scored +5 =3 -0 with an Elo performance rating of around 2850.

In 2003 Aronian won the Chess960 (Fischer Random) open at Mainz; this qualified him for a match against Chess960 "World Champion" Peter Svidler at Mainz the following year, a match which he lost 4.5-3.5. He went on to earn a rematch with Svidler in 2006, and won the match this time 5-3 to become Chess960 World Champion.

[edit] Notable games

Aronian (Black) annihilates a super-GM in 19 moves.

Aronian, as Black, destroys super-grandmaster Ivan Sokolov (2676) in 19 moves, using all of 10½ minutes on his clock to do so[1]: I. Sokolov-Aronian, Chess Olympiad, Turin 2006 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 d5 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5 c5!? 7.dxc5 h6 8.Bh4 g5 9.Bg3 Ne4 10.Bxb8!? (10.e3; 10.Be5) Qf6! (10...Rxb8?? 11.Qa4+ +-) 11.Bg3 Nxc3 12.a3 Bf5! 13.Qd2 Ba5 14.b4? Ne4 15.Qc1 Rc8!! 16.Ra2?! Rxc5 17.Qa1 (see diagram at right) Qc6! The threat of back-rank mate is crushing. 18.Qe5+ Kd8 19.Qxh8+ Kd7 0-1 If 20.e3, Rc1+ 21.Ke2 Bg4+! and 22...Qc4# (based on analysis by A.J. Goldsby)