Pavel Eljanov was born in Kharkiv, USSR (now Ukraine) and was awarded the Grandmaster title in 2000.
Championships:
Eljanov was joint 3rd in 6th European Individual Championship (2005) and =11th in the European Individual Championship (2013), the latter qualifying him for the World Cup (2013), where he defeated Sabino Brunello in the first round and Russian GM Dmitry Jakovenko in the second round. However, he was eliminated in a grueling third round when he lost by 3.5-4.5 to former compatriot GM Sergey Karjakin in the blitz tiebreaker of the third round. He scored 8/11 and placed =2nd at the European Individual Championship (2014), thereby qualifying for the World Cup 2015. He was =1st (2nd on tiebreak) at the Ukrainian Championship (2014). His =5th with 7.5/11 in the European Individual Championship (2015) would have been enough to qualify for the World Cup had he not already qualified in the 2014 EICC. At the World Cup (2015), Eljanov defeated Rinat Jumabayev, Alexander Ipatov and Alexander Grischuk in successive rounds, each time winning both standard time games without resorting to tiebreakers, ie: a 6-0 result in the first three rounds. He defeated Dmitry Jakovenko in the Round of Sixteen (fourth round) to proceed to the quarter final where he defeated Hikaru Nakamura by 1.5-0.5. He met Sergey Karjakin in the semi final but lost in a tense see-sawing tiebreaker, the ultimate result of their match being 2.5-3.5.
Tournaments:
He was runner up to Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu at the Open Internacional D’Andorra 2003 and winner of the 2005 Canadian Open, the Amsterdam Chess Tournament (2005), the category 15 Montreal Empresa International (2006), the category 18 Bosnia (2009) tournament (with 7/10, ahead of Wang Hao and Borki Predojevic on 5.5/10), and Corus Group B (2007) with 9/13. Requiring a win in the last round to win the Aeroflot Open (2006) outright, Eljanov lost. His strongest results yet were at 2009 European Team Championship (see below) and at the Category 20 FIDE Grand Prix (2010) tournament in Astrakhan, Russia, in which he took outright first with 8/13 and a 2809 performance. He continued his good form at the 2010 Politiken Cup in Copenhagen, winning outright with 8.5/10, in the process lifting his ELO to 2761, and his ranking to number 6 behind Carlsen, Topalov, Anand, Aronian and Kramnik. He held his own as top board for his team in the 26th European Club Cup 2010 (his team coming in first), and in the Olympiad, but scored poorly in the Croatian Team Championships and in the Tal Memorial (2010), and posted mediocre to poor scores in the Bundesliga, the Russian Team Championships 2011, and the French Top 12 competition, losing nearly 70 ELO points. He temporarily arrested his decline in form at the Ukrainian Championship (2011) when he emerged undefeated to take outright second with 7.5/11 (TPR 2777), however he lost his first round contest at the World Cup (2011) to compatriot GM and prodigy Yaroslav Zherebukh in the 25 minute rapid game tiebreaker. His excellent result at Aeroflot Open (2012) where he scored 6.5/9 to come equal first (3rd on tiebreak) partially restored his fortunes.
2013 saw a boost in his stocks, starting the year with 1st place at the Reykjavik Open (2013) and following with outright first at the powerful (category 18) 14th Karpov International (2013) in September. In October, he won the Chigorin Memorial (2013) on tiebreak from 10 other players who also scored 7/10. In 2014, he participated in the newly inaugurated Gashimov Memorial (Group B) (2014), a category 17 event that is the 2nd tier of an event commemorating the late Azeri grandmaster, and won outright with a score of 6/9. The following month, in July, his results turned around at the 15th Poikovsky Karpov Tournament (2014) where he only scored 3.5/9. In December 2014, he scored 6/9 to place =7th at the powerful Qatar Masters (2014).
In March 2015, Eljanov placed =2nd at the Reykjavik Open (2015) with 8/10, half a point behind the winner Erwin L'Ami. The following month he was equal second at the Capablanca Memorial (2015). In July 2015, he suffered a mild lapse of form with .5/10 at Biel (2015).
Olympiads and Team matches:
In 1999, Eljanov was a member of the Ukrainian national youth team, which won the U-16 Chess Olympiad in Artek, Ukraine. He has represented Ukraine at the 2004 (1st reserve), 2006 (board 4), 2008 (board 3), 2010 (Board 3) and 2014 (board 3) Olympiads, winning two team golds as a result of Ukraine's wins in 2004 and 2010, and an individual bronze in 2014. His strongest result yet was at the 17th European Team Championship (2009), where he scored 6/8 with a 2823 performance rating. He held his own as top board for his team in the 26th European Club Cup 2010 (his team coming in first), but scored poorly in the 2010 Croatian Team Championships.
He plays for the Economist-SGSEU-1 club of Saratov, which was first in the European Club Cup (2009) and in the European Club Cup (2010). He also plays in the Israel Chess League where he helped his club Ashdod Elit to second place in March 2012. In the 2013 Ukrainian League, he helped his team - the Law Academy of Kharkiv - to first place with a perfect (team) score of 9/9. In the Macedonian League, he played top board to help his team Alkaloid, Skopje to a gold medal in the 2013 season, when it won 7/7 matches by an overwhelming margin in each round, never scoring less than 5/6. In 2013, Eljanov also played in the Icelandic league. In 2014 he played in Israel's national league. He also played board 2 for the Denizsu Aquamatch Satranç Gençlik Ve Spor Kulübü in the Turkish Super League, helping his team to 4th place out of 13. He played top board for USV Dresden in the 2014-15 Bundesliga, which came 8th in the 16 team competition. He is also playing in the 2015 Ukrainian League. He represented Ukraine on board 3 at the FIDE World Team Championship (2015), helping his team win silver.
Rapids:
Eljanov is also an excellent rapid player as exemplified in his equal first (second on tiebreak) with Ian Nepomniachtchi at the Ordix Open (2008) ahead of leading exponents in the rapid game like Hikaru Nakamura. He won the Rector Cup Rapid 2014 with 8.5/11. Also in 2014, he competed in the FIDE World Rapid Championship (2014) and in the FIDE World Blitz Championship (2014), scoring a rating neutral 9/15 in the former without unduly troubling the leader board, and a similarly effective 12.5/21 result in the latter.
Personal:
He married Ukrainian WIM Olena Dvoretska in April 2009, and is a qualified lawyer. An interview with him is at http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp...
Ratings and rankings:
Eljanov made it to the world's top 100 in October 2004 when he was rated 2613, and has remained in the top 100 since then. He first made it to the 2700 rating mark in July 2007, and has rated above 2700 continuously since April 2013. His highest rating and ranking to date were in September 2010 when he was rated 2761 and ranked #6 in the world.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Eljanov
Wikipedia article: Pavel Eljanov; Live ratings: http://www.2700chess.com/
Kibitzing
