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Wednesday, 16 April 2008 |
 In the long run, all of the Grand Prix participants are taking a shot at the world title, but no player has been as close to becoming World Champion as Peter Leko from Hungary. In his match against (then World Champion) Vladimir Kramnik in October 2006, Leko led by a point with just one game left to play. Kramnik however managed to win the last game, tying the match 7-7, and remained the reigning World Champion.
Peter Leko was born September 8, 1979 in Subotica, Yugoslavia. He became a Grandmaster in 1994 at the age of 14 years, which was a world record at the time. In 2002, Leko won the super tournament in Dortmund, and in doing so, thanks to the Prague agreement he qualified for the already mentioned match against Kramnik. A year later, Leko shared victory with Vladimir Kramnik in Linares.
In January 2005, Leko scored probably his best tournament perfomance ever, winning the prestigious Corus Chess Tournament. He finished clear first, before Anand (2nd) and Topalov (3rd). In October of the same year, Leko was one of the participants of the FIDE World Chess Championship Tournament in San Luis, Argentina, where he finished fifth.
At the Candidates Tournament in Elista, in May-June last year, Leko beat both Mikhail Gurevich and Evgeny Bareev very convincingly (losing not a single game) to qualify for the FIDE World Chess Championship Tournament in Mexico in September. There he finished fourth out of eight players.
Peter Leko is a friendly young man, married to Sophie Petrosian, the daughter of Grandmaster Arshak Petrosian. As a chess player, Leko is known to be extremely solid - he's considered to be one of the most difficult players in the world to defeat. One of Peter's hobbies is soccer, which he used to play a lot when he was young.
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