Vasyl Ivanchuk

Vasyl Ivanchuk
Full name	Vasyl Mykhaylovych Ivanchuk
Country	Ukraine
Title	Grandmaster
FIDE rating	2781 (No. 4 on the July 2008 FIDE ratings list)
Peak rating	2787 (October 2007)

Vassily Ivanchuk, also transliterated as Vasyl ([Василь Михайлович Іванчук , Vasyl Mykhaylovych Ivanchuk] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)) (born March 18 1969), is a Ukrainian chess grandmaster. Ivanchuk has an Elo rating of 2781 on the FIDE July 2008 rating list, making him number four in the world and Ukraine's number one. On the live top list chess ratings web-site [1] he is rated number 3 with a rating of 2791 as of July 25th 2008 behind world champion Vishy Anand and Chess Prodigy Magnus Carlsen. At his career peak, he has been rated as high as second, behind only Garry Kasparov. He played board one on the victorious Ukraine team at the 2004 Calvia Chess Olympiad. As of November 2007 he is the World Blitz Chess champion.

Early years

Ivanchuk was born in Berezhany, Ukraine. He first achieved international notice by winning the 1988 New York Open with 7.5/9, ahead of a field filled with Grandmasters. He tied for first place in the 1988 World Junior Chess Championship at Adelaide, but lost the title on tiebreak to Joel Lautier (http://www.chessmetrics.com, the Vassily Ivanchuk player file). He was awarded the Grandmaster title in 1988.

Reaches world elite

Ivanchuk reached chess world fame at the age of 21 when he won the Linares tournament in 1991. Fourteen players participated, eight of them rated top-ten of the world, including World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, while the rest were all among the world's top 50 players. It was a close call between Ivanchuk and Kasparov, but Ivanchuk won by half a point, and Ivanchuk defeated Kasparov in their individual game.

It was believed that Ivanchuk would become World Champion, but this has not yet happened, although he came close in 2002 when he reached the finals of the FIDE World Championship Knockout. Even though he has been consistently among the top 10 since 1989, ranked as high as number 2 on a few occasions, he has played poorly in matches which require a different approach than tournament play. Most chess fans blame this on his weak nerves and his tendency to blunder in critical positions.

Eccentric character

GM Ivanchuk

"Big Chucky", as Ivanchuk is called, has been described by Viswanathan Anand as the most eccentric player in the chess world. Anand, tongue-in-cheek, gave his view on Ivanchuk like this [2]:

He’s someone who is very intelligent ... but you never know which mood he is going to be in. Some days he will treat you like his long-lost brother. The next day he ignores you completely.

The players have a word for him. They say he lives on 'Planet Ivanchuk'. (Laughs) ... I have seen him totally drunk and singing Ukrainian poetry and then the next day I have seen him give an impressive talk.

For a while he was trying to learn Turkish. Don’t ask me why ... Everyday is a surprise with him.

When he plays, Ivanchuk rarely looks at the board. Instead he stares at the ceiling and at the walls with a blank stare (although this is not uncommon with top players who calculate without looking at the board). His playing style is unpredictable and highly original, making him a threat to any chess player, although it sometimes also leads to quick losses.

Major titles

Major tournament wins include New York Open 1988, Corus 1996, Linares 1989, 1991 and 1995, Foros (Aerosvit) 2006 and 2007, Montreal International 2007. Ivanchuk lost to compatriot Ruslan Ponomariov in the final match of the 2002 FIDE World Chess Championship. In 2004 he won the European Championship, and in 2006 he finished second in that Championship. He won the 2005 Canadian Open Chess Championship at Edmonton (shared). In November 2007, Ivanchuk won the World Blitz Chess Championship in Moscow beating classical chess World Champion Anand in the last decider game. On May 18, 2008, he won the M-Tel Masters tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria with a score of 8/10 (six wins, four draws, and no losses).

Team chess standout

Ivanchuk has often been at his best in international team competitions. He has played in ten chess Chess Olympiads, twice for the Soviet Union (1988 and 1990), and eight times for Ukraine, after the Soviet Union split up in 1991. He has won a total of ten medals, and has been on three gold-medal winning teams (USSR in 1988 and 1990, Ukraine in 2004). In 122 games, Ivanchuk has scored (+47 =71 -4), for 67.6 per cent. His detailed Olympiad records, from the site http://www.olimpbase.org/players/oeo8eigf.html, follow.

• Thessaloniki 1988, USSR 2nd reserve, 6.5/9 (+4 =5 -0), team gold;
• Novi Sad 1990, USSR board 1, 7/10 (+5 =4 -1), team gold, board bronze;
• Manila 1992, Ukraine board 1, 8.5/13 (+6 =5 -1);
• Moscow 1994, Ukraine board 1, 9.5/14 (+5 =9 -0);
• Yerevan 1996, Ukraine board 1, 8.5/11 (+6 =5 -0), team silver, board silver, perf. bronze;
• Elista 1998, Ukraine board 1, 7/11 (+3 =8 -0), team bronze;
• Istanbul 2000, Ukraine board 1, 9/14 (+4 =10 -0), team bronze;
• Bled 2002, Ukraine board 2, 9/14 (+4 =10 -0);
• Calvia 2004, Ukraine board 1, 9.5/13 (+6 =7 -0), team gold, board bronze;
• Turin 2006, Ukraine board 1, 8/13 (+4 =8 -1).

References

• Interview with Anand
• About Linares Tournament
• Stories about Ivanchuk and Linares
• Ivanchuk wins World Blitz Championship, Moscow 2007

External links

• Vassily Ivanchuk rating card at FIDE
• Vasyl Ivanchuk player profile and games at Chessgames.com