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6 unusual facts about Vladimir Kramnik


Alexei Shirov

In September 2010, Shirov participated in the Grand Slam Chess Masters preliminary tournament in Shanghai from September 3 to 8, where he faced world No. 4 Levon Aronian, world No. 5 Vladimir Kramnik, and Wang Hao; the top two scorers qualified for the Grand Slam final supertournament from October 9 to 15 in Bilbao against world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen and world champion Viswanathan Anand.

On the basis of his rating, he was invited to play a ten game match against Vladimir Kramnik to select a challenger for World Champion Garry Kasparov.

FIDE World Chess Championship 2005

However, the non-participation of "Classical" World Champion Vladimir Kramnik meant that there were still two competing claimants to World Champion: FIDE Champion Topalov, and "Classical" Champion Kramnik.

World Chess Championship 2008

The match was a one-off event in which the previous world champion (Vladimir Kramnik) had been given the right to challenge to regain his title.

In early 2006, FIDE had already announced the conditions for the World Chess Championship 2007: an eight-player tournament which included FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov, but not "Classical" World Champion Vladimir Kramnik.

The World Chess Championship 2008 was a best-of-twelve-games match between the World Chess Champion, Viswanathan Anand, and the previous World Champion, Vladimir Kramnik.


33rd Chess Olympiad

Even without their strongest players, the "Three K's" (PCA world champion Garry Kasparov, FIDE champion Anatoly Karpov and Vladimir Kramnik), Russia were still favourites, and the team did win their fourth consecutive title.

Tal Memorial

The Tal Memorial 2012 took place from 7 to 18 June 2012, with participants Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik, Teimour Radjabov, Alexander Grischuk, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Tomashevsky and Luke McShane.


see also