International Master (2008); Grandmaster (2010).
Grandmaster norms (1)
Kovalenko's application for the Grandmaster title was accompanied with five GM norms:
- the Alushta Summer Tournament in June 2009, in which he scored 9 from the first 11 rounds, half a point above the requirement for a norm;
- the Moscow Open (2010) in January-February 2010 in which he scored the requisite 5/9;
- the Bondarevsky Memorial Tournament in December 2010 in which he scored 6.5 from the first 9 rounds, a point above norm requirement.
Kovalenko's GM title would therefore have come into effect on 20 December 2010 (when he was aged 21 years 11 months 21 days) as his rating was already over 2500 at the time.
Nevertheless, the extra two GM norms submitted were in respect of:
- the Moscow Open 2011 E, where he scored 7.5/9, a point above requirement for a norm; and
- the Aeroflot Open (2011), where his scored of 5/9 was half a point above norm requirement.
Championships
<National> Won the Latvian Championship in 2013 and 2014.
<World> Won the Baltic Zonal in 2014 qualifying for the World Cup (2015) where he was unexpectedly eliminated in the first round by Yang Wen.
Standard Tournaments
<2009> Kovalenko won Alushta Summer Tournament in June 2009 with 9.5/13, a point clear of equal second placed Suri Vaibhav and Alexander Kovchan, despite only scoring a draw in the last two rounds after gaining his first GM norm.
<2010> He won the Bondarevsky Memorial Tournament with 7.5/11 a point clear of Viacheslav Zakhartsov who was outright 2nd.
<2013> Won the 17th Voronezh Chess Festival in 2013 with 7/9.
<2015> Winner of Zalakaros Open 2015, the Iasi Open 2015, the Albena Open 2015 and the Najdorf Memorial 2015, the last mentioned with a powerful 8/9 performance that took his rating to over 2700 for the first time.
Team events (2)
<National representation> Kovalenko played board 2 for Latvia at the Tromso Olympiad (2014).
<National Leagues> Played board 2 for the EGU-Perspektiva Lipetsk region team in the Russian Team Championship (2012). Played board 2 for the Law Academy Kharkiv team in the 2012 Ukrainian League, winning team and individual gold.
Sources and references
(1) http://ratings.fide.com/title_appli...; (2) http://www.olimpbase.org/playersua/... - results are incomplete as of July 2015 in respect of the Ukrainian League
Wikipedia article: Igor Kovalenko
Kibitzing
