The marvellous Peter Svidler
Born at the Leningrad Region in Russia, Peter Svidler is another dominant chess sensation that occupies a big part in the world of chess. As of January 2008, he is ranked fifth overall by the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and has a total score of 2763 under the Elo rating system. He attained the grandmaster status in 1994.
This Russian chess grandmaster started playing the game when he was still six years old. After continuous training and studies, there seems to be no stopping Svidler from achieving greatness. Since then, his game progressed at a pretty rapid pace. He started to get involved in various chess clubs and several junior chess competitions to hone his skills in the game.
Svidler has a very impressive professional record. He ended up winning 4 Russian championships which include successful runs in 1994, 1995, 1997, and 2003. He gained some serious respect from the international chess scene when he got his way through the semifinal round of the FIDE World Championship. His game blossomed under the tutelage of his coach Andrei Lukin.
In recent years, Svidler became a very important part of the so-called Fischer Random Chess, which is more popularly known as the Chess960. His talent proved to be very natural as he completely dominated the first ever Chess960 Open tournament that transpired in Mainz, Germany. Since then, he showed the world that he was indeed a force to reckon with especially in international chess tournaments.
In 2003, Svidler got his groove on by winning the Mainz Chess Classic after beating top contender Peter Leko in a grueling eight game battle. After that, he successfully defended his Chess960 World Championship title for two more years against Levon Aronian in 2004 and Zoltan Almasi in 2005. A year later, Svidler lost the title to Aronian.
The year 2005 proved to be a good one for Svidler. It was during this time that he finished second in the prestigious FIDE World Chess Championship. He shared second place with the notable Indian chess grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand. The top spot for that tourney went to the Bulgarian chess sensation Veselin Topalov.
After another successful year, Svidler continued on his winning ways by finishing second in the World Blitz Championship in 2006. The event was a huge one which transpired at the coastal city of Rishon Lezion in Israel. Within the same year, he also finished first overall at the Dortmund 2006 international chess tournament in Germany. He finished the event tied with fellow Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik.
Svidler has been a consistent top performer throughout his illustrious career. In 2007, he took part in the World Chess Championship tournament. In that particular event, he finished fifth among the eight highly celebrated participants. He scored 6.5 out of the possible 14 points.
