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Wednesday, 16 April 2008 |
 This 25-year-old Frenchman has been a big name in the chess world for more than half of his life. He won his first world title already at the age of ten, and collected many other great results since. After a small period in which he seemed a little less motivated, Bacrot is back in full swing.
Etienne Bacrot was born January 22, 1983 in Lille, France. He started playing at the age of 4 and became World Champion in both the under-10 and under-12 sections. In March 1997, under the auspices of his trainer Iossif Dorman, he became the youngest ever Grandmaster at the age of 14 years and two months (in December that year, Ruslan Ponomariov broke his record).
In 1997 he won the Enghien-les-Bains tournament and in 1999, Bacrot won Bermuda and also the Lausanne Young Masters, beating Ruslan Ponomariov in final. In the same year he became the youngest chess player ever to win the French Championship, at the age of 16. He also won it in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003 - five times consecutively.
Bacrot has played many 6-game matches in his home town Albert, in which he has beaten players such as Vasily Smyslov, Boris Gelfand, Robert Hübner and Ivan Sokolov.
With the Paris NAO chess club he took many national titles and twice the prestigious European Club Championships, in 2003 and 2004. In French team championship in 2004, Bacrot won all his eleven games. A year later he won the Karpov Poikovsky tournament, ahead of Viktor Bologan, Alexander Grischuk, Peter Svidler and Alexey Dreev.
At the Dortmund super tournament, Bacrot finished third, and at the end of 2005 he finished third at the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Manskiysk, after he had beaten Chumfwa, Kempinski, Sutovsky, Lautier, Rublevsky and Grischuk. In the semi finals he had lost to eventual winner Aronian.
2006 started with disappointing results in Wijk aan Zee, Linares and Sofia, but at the Chess Olympiad in Turin, May 2006, Bacrot scored an excellent 6/8 against opponents averaging 2640, winning the bronze medal. In August that year, Bacrot won the FiNet Chess960 Open with a 9.5/11 score.
In May last year, Bacrot lost his Candidates Match in Elista against Gata Kamsky.
Bacrot is the father of two young children (Alexandre and Victoria) with Nathalie Bonnafous. He is one of the strongest players in the circuit who regularly updates a personal chess website.
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