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Wednesday, 16 April 2008 |
 Azerbaijan has the luxury to have no less than three participants in this Grand Prix Series. Not only do Mamedyarov and Radjabov belong to the world's top ten players, but as the host city for the first event, Baku could also invite Vugar Gashimov as their nominated player.
Gashimov was born July 24, 1986 in Baku, Azerbaijan. His father, a retired army colonel who served at the Defense Ministry, is a candidate master and taught him how to play when Vugar was six years old.
Vugar Gashimov is three times Azerbaijan champion (1995, 1996 and 1998). In 1998 he gained the IM title and four years later he became a GM. He is four times silver medalist at the European Youth Championship (1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000). In 1999, he was the winner of the under-16 group of the Kasparov's Cup.
In an interview Gashimov has said that in those years, his rivalry with especially Radjabov and Guseinov has helped his development a lot. He also said that health problems, on the other hand, might have hampered his progress to some extent.
In 2005, he won the Acropolis open and in August 2006, Gashimov won the Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival, ahead of 19 GMs. At the 50th Reggio Emilia tournament in December 2007, he finished shared second behind Almasi, together with Ni Hua and Harikrishna.
Recently, Gashimov showed one of his best results ever: he won the big Cappelle la Grande open tournament in February 2008. With a score of 7/9 he came joint first with Arutinian, Fedorchuk, Kryvoruchko, Chernyshov, Deviatkin, Kotrionias and l'Ami, but Gashimov won the tournament on tiebreak.
Gashimov likes to study Alekhine's games, "because of his attacking energetic
style". Of the modern elite, he admires Anand. Vugar Gashimov consider himself a universal player: equally good in positional and tactical play. He's also known as a terrific blitz player, likes to watch Jackie Chan films and loves to play football, but also billiards and table tennis.
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