Championships:

Movsesian came 3rd in the World Junior Championship of 1997, won the Czech Championship in 1998, the Slovakian Championship in 2002 and 2007 and came =2nd at the European Individual Championship (2008).

Movsesian was seeded directly into the second round of the 1999 World Championship Knockout Tournament in Las Vegas, where he defeated Goran Dizdar, Peter Leko , and Alexei Fedorov in the preliminary rounds before losing in the quarter final to Vladimir Akopian. In New Delhi in the 2000 version of the event, he was again seeded directly into round 2 where he defeated Viorel Iordachescu before losing to Jaan Ehlvest in round 3. He qualified for the Knockout Championship in Moscow in 2002, defeating Vadim Malakhatko in round one before losing to Zurab Azmaiparashvili in round 2. In 2004 in Tripoli, he beat Konstantin Landa and Peter Acs , before being defeated by Veselin Topalov in round 3. The FIDE World Cup (2005) and World Cup (2009) saw Movsesian bowing out in the first round to Mark Paragua and Yangyi Yu respectively, while the World Cup (2011) saw him defeat Women's World Champion Yifan Hou in the first round, before losing to Hungarian GM Judit Polgar.

Classical Tournaments:

Movsesian’s early successes include 1st at Pardubice in 1995, Hamburg 1997, and Groningen 1998. He was a quarter finalist in the 1st FIDE World Cup (before it became part of the World Championship cycle), won Sarajevo outright in 2002 with 6/9 and in 2007 at the 37th Bosna Chess Tournament (2007) with 6.5/9. He came second in the 14th International GM Tournament at Salona in Croatia in 2006 behind Vladimir Malakhov, won the Czech Coal Carlsbad Tournament (2007) in Karlovy Vary with 4.5/7 on count back against co-leader Ruslan Ponomariov and also won the Mikhail Chigorin Memorial in Saint Petersburg in 2007 on countback from Alexei Gubajdullin. Other successes include winning Corus (Group B) (2008) with 9.5/13, one point ahead of Nigel Short and Etienne Bacrot , finishing =1st at the Gibraltar Masters with 7.5/10 and in January 2011 came =3rd at the category 18 Reggio Emilia (2010) with 5/9 (+1 -0 =8) behind the co=leaders Francisco Vallejo-Pons and Vugar Gashimov who finished with 6/9. He scored 7/10 (+5 -1 =4) at the Tradewise Gibraltar (2012), placing =6th. In August 2012, he won the Master Tournament in the Biel Chess Festival (2012) and in January 2013, he placed =3rd place behind Richard Rapport and Arkadi Naiditsch with 8.5/13 at the Tata Steel (Group B) (2013). Movsesian came =1st (7th on tiebreak) with 8/11 at the European Individual Championships (2013), and thereby qualified for the 2013 World Cup.

Team competitions:

Despite his impressive results in classical tournaments and in age, national, continental championships and world championship cycles, Movsesian’s forte is in team competition. He represented the Czech Republic at the Olympiads of 1998 and 2000 on boards 3 and 1 respectively, and then went on to represent Slovakia on board 1 in the Olympiads of 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2010 before returning to his native Armenia to represent that country on board 2 at the 40th Chess Olympiad (2012) in Istanbul. There, despite a generally sub-par performance, he came through to win the critical game against Hungarian board 2 Zoltan Almasi in the last round to secure team gold for Armenia. Movsesian has participated in the ECC since 2000 (apart from 2005). He played for ŠK Bosna Sarajevo in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2008 during which time he won 2 team golds, a team silver, an individual gold, two individual silvers and an individual bronze. He’s also played for Corpora Lipovec (2003), ŠK Pardubice (2006), and OSG Baden-Baden (2009). He was a member of the Sankt Petersburg team between 2006 and 2012 (except 2007), winning individual gold in 2010 and 2012 and other medals every year except 2009. His overall result for the period from 2000-2011 was +35 =36 -5 for a 69.7% result. The ultimate mobile team player, Movsesian has played in the national club championships of Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, French, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Iceland, Russia, Slovakia and Spain. He has played in the European Team Championships three times: twice for the Czech republic in 1997 and 1999, and for Armenia in European Team Championship (2011). He participated for the first time in the World Chess Team Championship (2011) that were held in Ningbo in China in July due to Armenia being nominated by the FIDE President as the tenth team to participate.* Playing on board 2, he and his team mates took full advantage of the opportunity to win team gold, while Movsesian won bronze for his efforts on the second board, scoring 6/9 with a TPR of 2824.

Matches

In 2003, he played and won a 6 game match in Iceland against (now) 11 times Iceland Champion Hannes Stefansson by 4.5-1.5. In June 2011 he played another six game match, this time with David Navara, this time losing by 2.5-3.5.

Other

He is married to WGM Petra Krupkova.

Ratings and rankings

Movsesian’s FIDE ratings as of 1 May 2013 are:

<Classical> 2693, making him Armenia’s 3rd ranked player and world number 57. His peak rating was 2751 in January 2009 when he was ranked number 10 in the world;

<Rapid> 2680, number 48 in the world.

<Blitz> 2696, number 39 in the world.

Sources and references