| Yasser Seirawan | |
|---|---|
| Full name | ياسر سيروان |
| Country | United States |
| Born | March 24, 1960 Damascus, Syria |
| Title | Grandmaster |
| FIDE rating | 2658 (No. 93 on the November 2011 FIDE ratings list) |
| Peak rating | 2658 (November 2011) |
Yasser Seirawan (Arabic: ياسر سيروان; born March 24, 1960) is a chess grandmaster and four-time United States champion. He was winner of the World Junior Chess Championship in 1979. Seirawan is also a respected chess author and commentator.
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Seirawan was born in Damascus, Syria. His father was Arab and his mother an English nurse from Nottingham, where he spent some time in his early childhood. When he was seven, his family emigrated to Seattle (United States), where he attended McClure Middle School and Garfield High School, and honed his game at a (now-defunct) coffeehouse, the Last Exit on Brooklyn,[1] playing against the likes of Latvian-born master Viktors Pupols and six-time Washington State Champion James Harley McCormick.
He is married to FIDE Master Yvette Nagel, daughter of former Leefbaar Nederland political party president and politician Jan Nagel.[2]
Seirawan began playing chess at 12; at 13 he became Washington junior champion. At 19 he won the World Junior Chess Championship. He also won a game against Viktor Korchnoi, who then invited Seirawan to Switzerland, where Korchnoi was training for his world title match against Anatoly Karpov.[3]
For many years he was the chief editor of the Inside Chess magazine, which however later became an Internet-only magazine and later just a column at the ChessCafe.com website.
In 1999, Seirawan played a ten-game match against Michael Adams in Bermuda. The match was drawn +2–2=6.[4]
In 2001, Seirawan released a plan to reunite the chess world, which at that time had two world champions: Ruslan Ponomariov had gained the title under the auspices of FIDE, while Vladimir Kramnik had beaten Garry Kasparov to take the Einstein title. It called for one match between Ponomariov and Kasparov (the world number one), and another between Kramnik and the winner of the 2002 Einstein tournament in Dortmund (who turned out to be Péter Lékó). The winners of these matches would then play each other to become undisputed World Champion. This plan was signed by all parties on May 6, 2002, in the so-called "Prague Agreement". The Kramnik-Leko match took place (the match was drawn, with Kramnik retaining his title); the Kasparov-Ponomariov match was canceled in 2003, and this particular plan became moot after the September–October 2006 FIDE World Chess Championship 2006 between Kramnik and Veselin Topalov reunited the world championship title .
Following a series of events Seirawan participated in China during September 2003, there were reports that he would be retiring as a professional player. In the July 2007 FIDE list, Seirawan had an Elo rating of 2634, placing him in the top 100 chess players in the world, and America's number four (behind Hikaru Nakamura, Gata Kamsky and Alexander Onischuk). He played six games in the July 2007 FIDE update.
In 2007, Seirawan unveiled his enhanced chess game called Seirawan chess which he is currently promoting worldwide. The first ever event was a 12 board simultaneous exhibition held March 31, 2007 in Vancouver, Canada.[5]
In July 2011, Seirawan returned from hiatus to competitive chess, playing in the world team championship taking place in China, as part of the USA team. He had significant results, including wins vs. GM J. Polgar and GM Mamedyarov, both active and much higher rated players.[6]
Seirawan has written several books.
The popular "Winning Chess" series (with co-author IM Jeremy Silman):
The "Winning Chess" series was originally published by Microsoft Press; it is now published by Everyman Chess.
| Preceded by Walter Browne, Larry Evans, and Larry Christiansen |
United States Chess Champion 1981–1983 (with Walter Browne) |
Succeeded by Walter Browne, Larry Christiansen, and Roman Dzindzichashvili |
| Preceded by Lev Alburt |
United States Chess Champion 1986 |
Succeeded by Nick de Firmian and Joel Benjamin |
| Preceded by Michael Wilder |
United States Chess Champion 1989 (with Roman Dzindzichashvili and Stuart Rachels) |
Succeeded by Lev Alburt |
| Preceded by Boris Gulko |
United States Chess Champion 2000–2001 (with Joel Benjamin and Alexander Shabalov) |
Succeeded by Larry Christiansen |