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Sunday, 13 April 2008 |
 Is Armenia's best chess player Levon Aronian ready for a serious shot at the world title? From looking at his record, we should answer that with a firm "yes." The 25-year-old has belonged to the world elite since 2005, when he reached the fifth place in the FIDE rating list. But as early as 1994 there were early signs of his ability, when he won the World under-12 Championship with 8/9, ahead of future stars like Bacrot, Ponomariov, Vallejo Pons and Grischuk.
Levon Aronian was born October 6, 1982 in Yerevan, Armenia. Besides winning the World under-12, he also won the World under-20 in 2002, finishing ahead of the likes of McShane, Ganguly, Timofeev, Bu Xiangzhi and Harikrishna.
In February 2005, Aronian was part of a five-way tie for first place at the Gibtelecom Masters in Gibraltar. At the end of that year Aronian achieved a major success, winning the World Cup tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk by beating Ponomariov in the final. In 2006, Aronian finished clear first at the Linares super tournament, and shared first place at the Tal Memorial in Moscow. In between those two, he was first board in the Armenian team that won the gold medal at the Chess Olympiad in Turin, in May.
In January 2007, Aronian finished joint first at the prestigious Corus Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, along with Topalov and Radjabov. In May 2007, he defeated World Champion Vladimir Kramnik 4-2 in a rapid chess match, after which he defeated Magnus Carlsen and Alexei Shirov at the Candidates Tournament in Elista, thus qualifying for the FIDE World Chess Championship Tournament in October 2007, in Mexico City. There Aronian had a disappointing results (a rare case by now!), scoring 6/14 and finishing 7th out of the 8 participants.
But in January 2008 Aronian was back on track, winning the Corus Chess Tournament again, this time joint with Magnus Carlsen, scoring 8/13. In Linares, he finished third together with Topalov, and in March this year Aronian won the Melody Amber blindfold and rapid tournament.
With his relaxed and friendly personality, Aronian is appreciated by colleagues and fans. His playing style reveals a modern, pragmatic approach: he likes complicated games with original positions that require a deep calculation. But this is combined with a deep knowledge of today's major openings. When he's not playing chess, he likes to listen to all kinds of music, or play strategy computer games
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