Championships

<Age> Gelfand won the Junior Championship of the Soviet Union with 9/11 in January 1985, at the age of 16, a half point ahead of Vassily Ivanchuk. He came =1st (2nd on count back to Joel Lautier) in the World Junior Championship in 1988 and became European Junior Champion in 1989.

<World> In 1990, Gelfand won the Manila Interzonal to qualify as a Candidate for the 1993 World Championship. At the 1991 Candidates, he prevailed over Predrag Nikolic , but was then defeated in the quarter final by eventual Candidates winner and championship challenger Nigel Short. He qualified for the FIDE 1994 Candidates event by winning the last Interzonal in Biel, beating Michael Adams and Vladimir Kramnik only to lose to Anatoly Karpov in the finals.

Gelfand competed in all the knockout tournaments that either determined the World Championship, or was part of the World Championship cycle apart from the 2004 tournament in Tripoli. In the knockout tournament that was held in Groningen in 1997, he defeated Lautier in round three, where he was seeded directly because of his results in the last FIDE cycle, and then beat Vladislav Tkachiev and Alexey Dreev before bowing out to the winner of the tournament, Viswanathan Anand . In the world championship knockout tournament of 1999 held in Las Vegas, Gelfand was seeded into the second round where he defeated Jonathan Speelman , and then beat Lautier in round three before losing to the eventual winner, Alexander Khalifman . In 1999 in New Delhi, he was again seeded into round 2 where he defeated Emir Dizdarevic , and then Jeroen Piket in round three before he was defeated by Alexey Shirov in round four. In the 2001-02 knockout tournament held in Moscow, Gelfand lost to Peter Svidler in round 5 after defeating Alexis Cabrera , Leinier Dominguez Perez , Aleksander Delchev and Zurab Azmaiparashvili . He played in the 8-player 2002 Dortmund Tournament, which was the Candidates for the Classical World Chess Championship match in 2004, but failed to reach the semi-finals after coming third in the quadrangular round robin preliminary round.

Gelfand finished 6th at the FIDE World Cup (2005) , which produced 10 Candidates for the 2007 Candidates tournament, defeating Watu Kobese , Ruben Felgaer , Levan Pantsulaia , and Dreev in the preliminary rounds. In the two rounds of matches at the 2007 Candidates, Gelfand won both the Candidates Match: Gelfand-Kasimdzhanov (2007) and the Candidates Match: Gelfand vs Kamsky (2007) to qualify for the FIDE World Championship Tournament (2007) in Mexico City, where he tied for second with Kramnik, a point behind the winner, Anand. Subsequently, he won the World Cup (2009) by defeating Judit Polgar , the then reigning World Junior Champion Maxime Vachier-Lagrave , Dmitry Jakovenko , and Sergey Karjakin to reach the final, where he then faced former FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov , winning the match 7-5 in a playoff. In doing so he qualified for the World Championship Candidates (2011) for another shot at the World Championship in 2012. He played and defeated Shakhriyar Mamedyarov by 2.5-1.5 (+1 =3 -0) in the first round of the World Championship Candidates (2011), moving into the semi final where defeated Gata Kamsky in the tiebreaker; the result was 2-2 (+0 -0 =4) in the classical games, 2-2 (+1 -1 =2) in the rapid tiebreaker, and 1.5-0.5 in his favour in the blitz tiebreaker. He faced Alexander Grischuk in the final match, and after five draws, Gelfand won the sixth and final game thus gaining the right to challenge Viswanathan Anand for the world crown. The Anand-Gelfand World Chess Championship (2012) was played in Moscow in May 2012, and Gelfand lost in the rapid game tiebreaker 1.5-2.5 (-1 =3) after drawing the 12 games played under classical time controls 6-6 (+1 -1 =10). As the loser in the World Championship match, he qualified to play in the World Championship Candidates (2013) in London, where he placed a rating-enhancing 5th with 6.5/14 (+2 -3 =9).

Gelfand's 2014 World Championship campaign started well when he placed =1st alongside Veselin Topalov and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov at the FIDE Grand Prix London (2012), scoring 7/11 (+4 -1 =6; TPR 2836) and netting GP 140 points from the event. However, his 10th out of 12 placement at the FIDE Grand Prix Tashkent (2012) earned him only 30 Grand Prix points, for a combined tally of 170 points. Despite the poor showing in Tashkent, Gelfand is still in the running, with two more Grand Prixs events in which to improve his standing.

Tournaments

Gelfand has an imposing tournament record dating back to the late 80s. He won or came =1st at Klajpeda 1988, Majorca (GMA) 1989, Moscow 1992, Wijk aan Zee 1992, Manila 1993, Chalkidiki 1993, Biel 1993, Dos Hermanas 1994, Debrecen and Belgrade in 1995, Vienna and Tilburg in 1996, Polanica Zdroj in 1998 and 2000, and Malmö in 1999. He also won at Pamplona Tournament (2004) . In 2005, he was =1st with Pentala Harikrishna at the Bermuda International (2005) and 1st at 38th Biel Chess Festival (2005). In 2010 he was in the Experience Team that narrowly lost against the Rising Stars at the Rising Stars vs Experience (2010), although he top scored in the tournament with 7/10. He also won outright first with 7/10 at the 2010 NH Tournament in the Netherlands.

Other strong results include 2nd at Linares 1990, 3rd at Tilburg 1990, 3rd at the Reggio Emilia of 1991/92, 2nd in the category 16 tournament in Munich 1993, 3rd at Dortmund in 1996, 2nd in the 14th Dr Milan Vidmar Memorial tournament in Slovenia, 3rd at Biel 2001, 2nd at the category 18 tournament in Cannes in 2002 behind Topalov, =3rd at Dortmund Sparkassen (2006) , and 4th at the Tal Memorial (2006) a half point behind joint leaders, Ponomariov, Peter Leko and Aronian. In 2009, he came 2nd behind Ivanchuk at Bazna Tournament (2009) . Also in 2010, he came 2nd in the King's Tournament (2010) behind Magnus Carlsen . In the lead up to his World Championship contest with Anand, Gelfand competed at the category 21 Tata Steel (2012) tournament at Wijk aan Zee, finishing 9th out of 13, scoring 5/13 (+2 -5 =6; TPR 2675).

Gelfand’s results in the FIDE Grand Prix 2008-2010 were modest, coming 11th.

Olympiads

Gelfand played in ten Chess Olympiads, representing the Soviet Union once (1990), Belarus twice (1994 and 1996), and Israel seven times (2000-2012). In 1990, he won the team gold medal playing board 2 for Soviet Union, in the Olympiad (2008) held in Dresden, he won the team silver medal and also individual silver medal playing board 1 for Israel and in the Chess Olympiad (2010) held in Khantiy Mansiysk, he won team bronze playing board 1 for Israel.

Team

Gelfand is a team player and has participated in the German Bundesliga, and team championships in Israel, Spain, Poland, and Russia. He has also been part of the European Team Championships, the European Club Cup, the Russian Club Cup and the World Team Championships in 2005 and 2009. One of his best results was assisting his Moscow team ShSM-64 to win the Russian Team Championships (2010) with 16 out of a possible 18 match points. Playing for SHSM-64, he won team bronze at the 28th European Club Cup (2012) concluded in October 2012.

Match

Outside of the world championship cycle, Gelfand has played matches in France against Etienne Bacrot in 2002 which he lost 2.5-3.5, and a drawn match (2-2) against David Navara in the Czech Republic in 2006.

Rapids

Like most top players, Gelfand is a skilled rapid player. He was =1st with Kramnik in the rapid play section of the 2001 Amber event, and outright 1st in the 2002 edition of Amber's rapid play section. He came first in the 2002 Cap d'Agde, defeating Karpov in the final. In 2003, he defeated Polgar in the George Marx Rapid Match (2003) and in 2007, he came =1st at the Villa de Canada de Calatrava (2007) , following up with =1st at the Pivdenny Bank Chess Cup (2008) in Odessa. He also won the 2009 ACP World Rapid Cup (2009) with a 3-1 win over Svidler in the finals and won the Leko-Gelfand Match (2010) rapid match in Hungary by 4.5-3.5. Most recently, he defeated Aronian in the Leon Rapid (2010).

Ratings

Gelfand rating as of 1 May 2013 is:

<Classical> 2744, and is therefore Israel's top player and number 18 in the world;

<Rapid> 2728 (world #28); and

<Blitz> 2694 (world #40).

Other

In 2005, Gelfand published a book titled My Most Memorable Games.