Classical tournaments

Some of his early victories include the Lloyds Bank tournament in London in 1994 with 9.5 points out of 10, Kishenev in 1998 with 8.5/9 and the Russia Cup in Samara in 1998. He won in Pamplona in 1994 and 1998 (with 8/9), 2006 (6/7 and performance rating of 2951), but failed badly in 2010. In 1999, Morozevich played in his first super-tourney the Sarajevo Bosna and finished 4th with 5.5/9. In 2000 he participated at the Corus tournament and finished 5th out of 14 players and in 2002, he finished =3rd in Corus A with 8/13, a point behind the winner Evgeny Bareev.

He has played in the Russian championships (including Superfinals) of 2003, 2004, 2005 (where he was second), 2007, 2008 and 2011 (again coming second). He tied for first with Peter Svidler (who won on tiebreak) in the 56th Russian Championships (2003), and won outright in Russian Superfinals (2007) when he scored a series of 6 consecutive wins, finishing with 8/11, a full point ahead of the runner-up Alexander Grischuk. After an unsuccessful tournament at Dortmund in 2002, Morozevich announced his desire to leave professional chess, but this didn't happen. He went on to take an easy victory at the Biel International Chess Festival (2003) with eight points from ten games, and followed through with two further victories at this tournament: 37th Biel International Chess Festival (2004) and Biel Int'l Festival (2006), and a shared second in Biel International Chess Festival (2009). Morozevich shared second place with Magnus Carlsen behind Viswanathan Anand at the Linares-Morelia (2007) and in June 2008, he won the Bosnia Sarajevo Tournament (2008) with a margin of 1.5 points ahead of the runner up Leinier Dominguez Perez. In August 2008, he finished shared 2nd-5th in the Tal Memorial (2008) after leading the tournament in early rounds. Morozevich emerged from a five month hiatus to contest the Reggio Emilia (2010), managing to score 4/9 (+2 -3 =4) for a 2650 TPR. After a further lengthy hiatus, he emerged to win the Russian Chess Championships Higher League (2011) outright with 8/11 and a TPR of 2790 thereby regaining entry to the 2700 club, and more importantly, qualifying for the Russian Superfinals (2011). His preparation for the Superfinal was much boosted by coming outright second at the Biel Chess Festival (2011) behind Magnus Carlsen with +4 -1 =5, and a TPR of 2819. At the Superfinal, he placed outright second with 4.5/7 (TPR 2820) after a last round win against tournament winner Peter Svidler. After exiting the World Cup in the third round, Morozevich continued his good form and his comeback by convincingly winning the Governor's Cup (2011) in Saratov with 8.5/11 (+6 =5) and a TPR of 2915, 1.5 points clear of second placed Evgeny Tomashevsky. He finished 2011 and started 2012 by participating in the category 20 Reggio Emilia (2011), finishing =2nd (2nd on count back) behind Anish Giri with 5.5/10 after missing a winning combination in the final round against Nikita Vitiugov that would have yielded first place in the tournament. He started off as the runaway leader in the Tal Memorial (2012) with 4/5, but then only scored one draw in the next 4 rounds to finish with 4.5/9 (+3 -3 =3), which nevertheless added a couple of Elo points to his rating due to the average rating of he and his opponents creating a category XXII event. He withdrew after two rounds of the Grandmaster Tournament at the Biel Chess Festival (2012) for health reasons, and subsequently withdrew from the Russian team that played in the Chess Olympiad (2012) in Istanbul.

World championship competition

In 1997 Morozevich was the top seed at the World Junior Chess Championship, but lost to the eventual champion, Tal Shaked in a bishop and knight checkmate. That same year, Morozevich participated in the FIDE K.O. world championship, defeating Vasily Smyslov in the first round, but succumbed in the second to Lembit Oll. He participated in the FIDE K.O. world championship played in New Delhi in 2000. Due to his rating he was seeded directly into the second round in which he eliminated Gilberto Milos, then he proceeded to beat Evgeny Vladimirov 1,5:0,5 in the third round before finally being eliminated in the fourth round by Vladislav Tkachiev. In the 2001 FIDE K.O. championship played in his native Moscow Morozevich beat Zeliavok, Krishnan Sasikiran and Mikhail Gurevich before losing in tie-breaks in the fourth round against the eventual winner of the event Ruslan Ponomariov. In September 2005, Morozevich played in the FIDE World Championship Tournament (2005) in San Luis, taking fourth place behind Veselin Topalov, Anand and Svidler. This result qualified him to play in the FIDE World Championship Tournament (2007) two years later in Mexico City, but he was less successful there, ending up in joint sixth out of eight players. As a minor consolation, he managed to inflict the only defeat Vladimir Kramnik suffered in 2007. In the World Cup (2009) he advanced to the second round before being eliminated from the tournament by Viktor Laznicka. He participated in the 2011 World Cup, despatching Stelios Halkias and Alexandr Hilario Takeda dos Santos Fier with ease. However, after losing the first game of the third round to eventual runner-up Alexander Grischuk, he unexpectedly offered a draw, as White, after his twelfth move in the second game, losing the match and exiting the tournament.

Morozovich kicked off his 2014 World Championship campaign with a strong =1st alongside Wang Hao and Sergey Karjakin with 6.5/11 in the FIDE Grand Prix Tashkent (2012), accumulating 140 Grand Prix points. His =5th at FIDE Grand Prix Zug (2013) with 5.5/11 (+3 -3 =5) garnered another 75 GP points; his accumulated tally of 215 has him currently situated on 3rd place, with two more Grand Prix events in which to improve his standing.

Rapid/Blindfold play

Morozevich has performed exceptionally well in this category, winning the overall standings at the annual Amber tournament in 2002, sharing first in 2004, in 2006 and in 2008. He shared second in 2003, 2005, and in 2007. In 2009, he shared fourth with Anand. He also won the Paul Keres Memorial Rapid (2003) and the Petrov Memorial Rapid (2012), and came a strong 4th in the World Blitz Championship (2012). In September 2012, he won the 66th Moscow Blitz tournament with 17/21, two points clear of the field.

Team play

Morozevich played for Russia in the Olympiads of 1994 (for the "B" team), 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008 where the team scored a bronze (the "A" team winning gold), three golds, and a silver respectively, before missing medals in 2006 and 2008. He scored 7.5/10 at the 2000 event winning Bronze Medal for board 2 with a performance rating at 2803.7. Morozevich also won the gold medal in the World Team Championship (2005) in which he beat Ni Hua in the last round in a must win situation. He played for Russia in the European Team Championships of 2003, 2007, 2009 and 2011 winning gold on each occasion, either team gold or individual gold or both. He played for Tomsk in the Russian Team Championship of 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 and for Ekonomist SGSEU Saratov in 2012, winning three team and three individual golds with Tomsk, as well as two individual silvers and two team bronzes. He played for Economist-SGSEU Saratov in the 28th European Club Cup (2012) in October, helping his team to 4th place.

Ratings and rankings

<Classical>: Morozevich has been rated as high as No. 2 in the world (2788 on the July 2008 list), with his live rating all but touching 2800 at one stage*. His ultra-aggressive and unorthodox take-no-prisoners style has reaped enormous benefits for him, and attracted many devoted admirers. However, it has also meant serious fluctuations in his performance and rating, including his ELO rating temporarily dipping below 2700 following poor results at the 2010 Pamplona and Emilio Reggio tournaments. The extent of the fluctuations in his form and ratings can be seen from FIDE’s rating graph**. By 1 September 2011, his official rating had risen by 43 ELO to 2737 on the back of his results in the two Russian championships and his result in Biel. Currently (May 2013), Morozevich's rating is 2760 and he is number 11 in the world;

<Rapid> 2742 (world #16); and

<Blitz> 2756 (world #12).

Testimonial

"Morozevich is a bright player; I like how he plays. This is active chess: only forward! Sometimes luck is on his side, sometimes it is not. It is not boring to watch his games." – Kramnik

Sources and references