Blindfold Chess Podcast
Blindfold Chess Podcast
S3 E3 Levon Aronian v P. Bortoli (1994)
This week, we are taking a look at who CNN has called the “David Beckham of Chess” - the former World Rapid Champion, World Blitz Champion, World Chess960 Champion, former 2nd highest rating in the world, and 5-time Candidate for the World Championship - Levon Aronian.
In 2004, he played in his first FIDE World Chess Championship - a 128 player knockout tournament. The winner of the tournament became the FIDE World Champion. Levon - age 22 (the 34th seed), met Magnus Carlsen - age 13 (the 95th seed) in the first round where Aronian won 2 ½ to 1 ½ . He advanced to the 3rd round before being eliminated by Pavel Smirnov. He also earned Bronze for Armenia in the Olympiad.
In 2005, Aronian cracked the top 10 players in the world by rating. He won the Gibtelecom Masters tournament, the Karabakh tournament, and in the Russian Team Championship he had a performance rating of 2850, and in the Chess World Cup - the 128 player knockout tournament - he was seeded 3rd and ended up winning the event earning him a spot in his first Candidates tournament.
Levon also won the Finet Chess960 tournament again - requalifying him for the Chess960 World Championship rematch against Peter Svidler. This time, he won 5-3 to become the Chess960 World Champion.
In 2006, after a win at the Linares and Tal Memorial tournaments, Levon was the number 3 rated player in the world behind Topalov and Anand. He also assisted in earning the gold medal for Armenia in the 37th Chess Olympiad.
In 2008 and 2009, Aronian played in the FIDE Grand Prix, a series of tournaments over 2 years where the players needed to accumulate points from different tournaments in order to qualify for the next Candidates tournament. He won the 2008 August tournament, the 2009 April tournament, and tied for second at the 2009 August (the average rating of all 3 tournaments was 2700+). He scored well enough to win the Grand Prix qualifying him for the 2012 Candidates Tournament.
Again, there are so many accomplishments that Aronian has done in his career. Check out his Wikipedia page for a full list since I can't fit the entire script in this description :)
This week, we are turning the clocks back to 1994 to the Under 12 European Championship. Levon Aronian versus Peter de Bortoli.
Now, if we’re ready, let’s begin.
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Though he has not won the Classical Chess World Championship, Levon has shown to be arguably one of the most under rated top players we’ve seen in recent memory. He has been the Rapid World Champion, Blitz World Champion, and Chess960 World Champion. For almost 30 years, the name Levon Aronian has been synonymous with elite level chess playing.
That is all we have for this week, tune in next time where we will continue to work on our skills and look at another game of the Masters!
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1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.Bg5 Bf5 4.f3 e6 5.e4 dxe4 6.fxe4 Bb4 7.exf5 O-O 8.Nf3 exf5 9.Be2 h6 10.Bxf6 Qxf6 11.O-O Bxc3 12.bxc3 Nd7 13.Rb1 b6 14.Bd3 f4 15.Qd2 g5 16.Rbe1 Qg7 17.h4 g4 18.Qxf4 gxf3 19.Rxf3 Kh8 20.Rg3 Qf6 21.Qe4 1-0
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1397179
