Grandmaster Hansen won the 2012 Canadian open with 7½/9 and tied for share of 5th-10th with 9/13 at the World Junior Championship (2012) in Greece that same year. He tied for 1st-2nd in the 2008 Alberta Closed (1) and the 2011 Canadian Closed (losing to Bator Sambuev in a 2 game rapid tie-break at the latter event). His second place in the latter tournament (which was also the Zonal 2.2 championship) qualified him to play in the World Cup (2011), where he lost to Azeri super-GM Vugar Gashimov in the 1st round. Coached by Miodrag Perunovic, he made the list of top 100 juniors in the the world (at 73rd place) and top 8 Canadians in August of 2012. Before the 2015 Canadian youth chess championship started in Windsor, he, Aman Hambleton, Lefong Hua, and Romain Edouard provided lessons at a summer chess camp (2, 10) for juniors between June 29th and July 3rd.
He became the highest rated Canadian player on the FIDE lists in May of 2013. Born in the United States, he has dual USA and Canadian citizenship and studied at the University of Texas (3). He scored 8½/9 in the 2012 Panama open and at the Reykjavik Open (2014) (finishing (11) with 8/10), his tie for 2nd-5th saw his FIDE rating approach a new high of around 2600. He tied with fellow Canadian Hambleton for share of 3rd-7th in the Chess Festival Ortisei with 6½/9 (behind Sergey Volkov and Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu who finished with 7/9) (6) and they drew each other in the final 9th round of the 2013 Canadian open. Eric and Aman visited Valencia after his August World Cup (2013) visit so that they could play in a few European club league tournaments. Eric lost to Vladimir Malakhov in the first round of the World Cup, exiting the event. He finished with 6.5/9 at the 2015 Canadian zonal (12) and finished ahead of fellow Canadian coach Nikolay Noritsyn with 7½/11 at the Durban 2014 open in South Africa (8).
Teams
His Chess Olympiad (2012) debut on board 4 saw him score 6 wins and 3 draws after sitting out for only 1 of 11 rounds (2). His score of 7½/10, together with an earlier Grandmaster norm registered in Europe in the summer of 2012, confirmed his grandmaster title (4). He participated on the Canadian team of the Chess Olympiad (2014) (+3-2=4 on 2nd board) and the Chess Olympiad (2016) (+8-0=2 on 4th board).
He was a member of the Guildford 1 team that won the 4NCL in the 2013-14 season.
He joined Fabiano Caruana, Alexandre Lesiege, Michael Kleinman, Aman Hambleton, Lefong Hua, Elias Oussedik and Robin van Kampen on the Montreal Chessbrahs(14) team in 2016.
Videos: Nigel Short and Eric can be seen playing an ending in the 2013 Canadian open at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fknI... and again meeting here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3d... (2016 Chess Olympiad); Ivan Sokolov also met him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-J... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87p... ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1D... ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ3... ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZX... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMq...
References / Sources
(1) http://www.albertachess.org (Chess in Alberta),
(2) http://www.chess.ca/newsfeed/node/539 (Canadian Chess Federation),
(3) http://www.utsystem.edu/ (U of Texas),
(4) http://www.olimpbase.org/ (team chess archives),
(5) http://www.hansenchess.com/,
(6) http://www.server24chess.com/wwwOrt...,
(7) https://sites.google.com/site/ottaw... ,
(8) http://chess-results.com/tnr143577....,
(9) http://www.univechess.nl/en/open-gr...,
(10) http://www.fqechecs.qc.ca/cms/ (Quebec chess federation),
(11) http://www.sportsnet.ca/more/rook-s... (sports article),
(12) http://www.canadianchesszonal.com/x...,
(13) http://www1.bakuchessolympiad.com,
(14) http://chessbrah.tv/about-chessbrah/ (Montreal's Chessbrahs team joined the PRO Chess league in 2016).
Wikipedia article: Eric Hansen (chess player)