Tournaments

Wang Hao's earliest success includes winning the Qingdao Zhongfand Cup in July 2002 at the age of 12. In late 2003, his ELO jumped a spectacular 210 ELO points from 2215 to 2425 because of excellent results in three events. The first was the Chinese Teams Championships in September 2003 where he scored 5/7, adding 58.5 ELO, the second the World Youth Championships U14 in Halkidiki in October 2003 where he scored 6/9 and added 91.5 ELO points, and the third was the Chinese Individual Championship in November 2003 when he scored 6/10, adding 60 ELO.

The experience and success in these tournaments in late 2003 provided him with the improvement and the confidence that success instilled as the springboard for his spectacular assaults in 2005 when he leapt from untitled player to Grandmaster.

In July 2004, he won the Children of Asia, a youth tournament in Jakutsk with 5/5, and played in the U16 and open Olympiads (see below) and the 2004 Chinese Championships.

Wang Hao burst onto the international chess scene in 2005 with his first major tournament win at the 7th Dubai Open. An untitled player at the time of the event, and who turned 16 during round 5, he scored 7 points out of 9 to finish ahead of 53 Grandmasters and 30 International Masters with a 2731 performance. He followed this victory up with another at the 2005 Malaysian Open, this time spreadeagling the field with a score of 10/11 and a performance rating of 2843. His performances in these events, as well as in the Aeroflot Open (2005) A2 group where he had scored 6.5/9, provided the three GM norms he needed to earn him the GM title at the age of 16 (leap frogging the FM and IM titles altogether) to make him China's 20th Grandmaster. Wang Hao came =2nd behind Wang Yue in the double round robin Chinese Men Selective tournament that finished in January 2006, scoring 12/18, and competed in the Aeroflot Open (2006) scoring 5/9, and in the 6th Aeroflot Festival (2007) this time scoring 5.5/9. Wang Hao started 2007 with an equal second in the Singapore Masters followed by a win in February 2007 at the GACC Tournament at the University of Malaya, 4th at the Philippine International Open at Subic Bay, won the powerful double round robin (14 round) Selective Tournament for Asian Indoors Games 2007 in May and came 2nd in the Peoples Chess Festival 2007 in Stockholm in August.

Wang Hao started 2008 by coming =3rd at the Gibraltar (2008), half a point behind the winners. In March 2008, he won on tiebreak from Hannes Stefansson and Wang Yue in the Reykjavik Open (2008) with 7/9 points (2721 rating performance). In July 2008, he came 5th out of 10 players at the Category 18 9th Poikovsky Tournament (2008) in Russia where he scored 5.0/9 (+2=6-1), a half point behind the joint winners, with a TPR of 2734. In May 2009, he scored 5.5/10 (+3 -2 =5) at the Bosnia (2009) in Sarajevo with a 2725 performance, placing =2nd with Borki Predojevic (2nd on countback) and behind the winner Pavel Eljanov. In September 2009, he was runner up to Wang Yue in the Chess King tournament in Jinzhou. In May 2010, Wang Hao came first on countback ahead of Zahar Efimenko in the 40th Bosnia International tournament in Sarajevo. He scored 5/9 to come in 6th – again half a point behind the joint leaders - at the Tal Memorial (2010) and 5.5/9 to place =3rd (4th on countback) at the 1st Danzhou Tournament (2010) in June, again a half point off the lead. 2011 started modestly for Wang Hao in his first Tata A (formerly Corus A) tournament, but his 6/13 (+3 -4 =6) and a 2728 performance rating in the Tata Steel (2011) included wins over Alexander Grischuk and Ruslan Ponomariov. Wang Hao came 2nd at the the 26th Summer Universiade Individual Men in Shenzhen,China, with 6.5/9 behind an incandescent Li Chao who demolished the powerful field with 8.5/9. Wang Hao's finest moment so far has come with his outright victory in the Grandmaster Tournament at the Biel Chess Festival (2012) ahead of outright second placed Magnus Carlsen, after winning his last round game against Anish Giri.

In 2011, Wang Hao won the rapid chess section of the inaugural SportAccord World Mind Games, which also featured blitz and blindfold games in addition to other board games such as Go, Draughts, Bridge and Xiangqi.*

Team events/Olympiads

In August 2002, Wang Hao played on the fourth board of the gold medal winning Chinese national team in the U-16 Chess Olympiad in Kuala Lumpur, scoring 3/5. In July 2004, while still 14 years old, he won both individual and team gold with his national team in the U-16 Chess Olympiad in Calicut where his result was 8/9 on the first board, producing a rating performance of 2577. Two other members of this team also won individual gold.

Wang Hao was also a member of the Chinese team to the 36th Olympiad (2004) (2nd reserve scoring 3.5/5), the Olympiad (2008) (Board 4, scoring 4.5/7) and the Chess Olympiad (2010) (Board 2, scoring 7/10 and winning individual bronze); and the Chess Olympiad (2012) (Board 1, scoring 6/10) in Istanbul. In January 2008, at the 15th Asian Team Chess Championship in Visakhapatnam, Wang won an individual gold medal for his performance on board three (5/6), helping the national team to also winning gold. In April 2008, Wang competed at the Russian Team Championship (2008) in Dagomys, Sochi for the team ShSM 64 (Moscow), where he achieved a score of 8.0/11 (+5=6-0) and a performance rating of 2795; in 2010 he again played with the ShSM -64 (Moscow) Team which on this occasion won the Russian Team Championships (2010) outright with 16/18 points. Team members included Boris Gelfand, Sergey Karjakin, and Fabiano Caruana.

In July 2006, he scored 3.5/5 to be the best performing member of the victorious Chinese team that defeated Sweden in the China-Sweden Summit for the Aigo Cup and was a member of the victorious Youth team in the Youth vs Experience (2006). In August 2007, he competed in the 4th Russia vs China Match (2007) in which China was victorious, scoring 5.5/10. In September 2007, he was part of the victorious Chinese team in the UK vs China Match (2007). In September 2008, he competed at the 7th China vs Russia (2010) in Ningbo where he scored the highest in the men's category with 3.5/5 and a performance rating of 2844 for the men's team. In September 2010, he was again a member of the victorious Chinese team defeating Russia in its annual match; Wang Hao scored 3.5/5. His performance for the Chinese team in the World Chess Team Championship (2011) was exemplary, scoring an individual gold for board one and a team silver; his personal contribution was 6/9 with a TPR of 2854. Wang Hao also played for ShSM-64 Moscow in the European Club Cup (2011), coming fourth on board 2, with the team placing 5th. In 2012, he played board one for China and won individual and team gold at the 17th Asian Team Championships held in Zaozhuang, China.

In 2012, Wang Hao played for Chengdu Bank Team in the China Chess League Division A.

Championship Events

<Age>: In 1999, Wang came third in the U-10 Youth World Championship in Oropesa del Mar, Spain. In October 2006, he came =5th in the World Junior Chess Championship and in October 2007, he came third in the World Junior.

<National and Continental>: Wang has participated in all the annual Chinese Championships since 2003 except for 2011, coming =2nd in 2009 and 2nd in 2010. In September 2007 he came in second place behind Zhang Pengxiang at the Asian Individual Championship in Manila.

<World>: In October 2005 he qualified for the FIDE World Cup (2005), when he came joint first in the Beijing Zonal 3.5 tournament but lost his first-round match against Vladimir Malakhov. He made it to the second round of the World Chess Cup (2007), before succumbing to Ruslan Ponomariov. He fared slightly better in the World Cup (2009), but was defeated in the third round by Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. He qualified for the World Cup (2011) via his rating, but withdrew at the eleventh hour for health reasons. He is qualified by virtue of his rating to play in the 2013 World Cup.

<2012-2013 FIDE Grand Prix series>: Playing as the AGON nominee in the FIDE Grand Prix London (2012), Wang Hao scored 5.5/11 to place 6th and get 70 GP points on the board for his 2014 World Championship campaign. He placed =1st alongside Sergey Karjakin and Alexander Morozevich with 6.5/11 in the FIDE Grand Prix Tashkent (2012), increasing his Grand Prix tally to 210 points. He is currently standing second behind Shakhriyar Mamedyarov on 220.

Rating

<Classical> As at 1 May 2013, Wang Hao's rating was 2743, ranking him as the top player in China, the second ranked player in Asia, and number 16 in the world;

<Rapid> 2708 (world #34);

<Blitz> 2698 (world #38).

Sources and references

Wikipedia article: Wang Hao %28chess player%29; live rating: http://www.2700chess.com/ Images: http://www.google.com.au/images?hl=...; * http://www.worldmindgames.net/en/ne...