Levon Aronian

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**Levon Aronian**

Full name	Levon Aronian
Country	Armenia
Born	October 6, 1982 (age 24) Yerevan, Armenia

Title	Grandmaster


Rating	2759 (No. 5 on the April 2007 FIDE ratings list)
Peak rating	2761 (July 2006)

Levon Aronian (born October 6, 1982) is an Armenian chess player. On the April 2007 FIDE list, he had an Elo rating of 2759, making him number five in the world and Armenia's number one.

1 Career
2 Chess960
3 Notable games
4 External links

[edit] Career

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 December 2005 Levon Aronian 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, Aronian 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 former FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov.

In January 2007 Aronian shared first place at the 19th category Corus chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee along with Topalov and Radjabov.

[edit] Chess960

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 strong GM in 19 moves.

Aronian, as Black, defeats GM 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)