Maxime Vachier-Lagrave


Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Dortmund 2016
Association	France France
Born	October 21, 1990 Nogent-sur-Marne
title	International Master (2004) Grand Master (2005)
Current Elo rating	2778 (August 2020)
Best Elo rating	2819 (August 2016)
Tab at the FIDE (English)

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (born October 21, 1990 in Nogent-sur-Marne ) is a French chess grandmaster .

Life

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, 18th World Championships Blitzrunde 2015
(left Yuri Vovk, right Magnus Carlsen)

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave,
winner of the Dortmund Chess Days 2016

At Christmas 1995, the five-year-old Maxime received an electronic chess game from his father, a computer scientist, which he then worked on intensively. At the age of fourteen he became an international champion in 2004 . He fulfilled the required standards in February 2003 at a GM tournament of the NAO club in Paris , in February 2004 at a tournament in Évry and in July 2004 at the Paris Championship. The IM norm from the Paris championship also counted as the GM norm, he fulfilled other GM norms in December 2004 at a GM tournament of his former club NAO and in February 2005 at a tournament in Évry, so that he won the grandmaster title in 2005 was awarded. Vachier-Lagrave achieved numerous top placements at international tournaments. His greatest successes include tournament victories in Paris 2004 (International City Championship and NAO International ), Lausanne 2006 (final victory over Wang Yue ), Paks 2008 (before Alexander Beliavsky ), Paris 2008 (shared with Alberto David ) and in Biel 2009 (before Wassyl Ivanchuk and Alexander Morosewitsch ). In the same year Vachier-Lagrave was Junior World Champion in Puerto Madryn . In 2010 he won the crown group of the 14th Univé Schaaktoernooi in Hoogeveen . In addition, he became European blitz chess champion in Warsaw after finishing 9th in the blitz chess world championship previously held in Moscow . In 2013 he won the chess festival in Biel for the second time, where he prevailed in the playoff against Étienne Bacrot , Ding Liren and Alexander Moiseenko . He also won this tournament in the following two years: in 2014 with 6 points (+3 = 6 −1) and in 2015 with 6.5 points from 10 games (+4 = 5 −1).

Vachier-Lagrave first took part in the French championship in 2004 , where he was the youngest player to score 4.5 points from eleven games. In 2005 he shared second place with Andreï Sokolov after Joël Lautier , and in 2006 he finished fourth. In 2007 he won the championship before Vladislav Tkachiev , whom he beat 3-1 in rapid chess match. In 2008 he missed the title defense when he lost in rapid chess match (0.5-1.5) Étienne Bacrot . Both players had previously dominated the championship with 8.5 points from 11 games. In the championship year 2009 Vachier-Lagrave was second again and had to let Vladislav Tkachiev go first. In 2011 he was able to win the title again in Caen with 7 points from 11 games.

So far, Vachier-Lagrave has taken part in the World Chess Cup five times . In 2009 he reached the round of 16 by winning against Yu Shaoteng , Georg Meier and Yu Yangyi , in which he was defeated by the eventual winner Boris Gelfand . In 2011 he failed after an opening win against Ziaur Rahman in the second round to Bu Xiangzhi . He was most successful in 2013 , when he reached the semifinals with victories against Alexander Shabalov , Isan Reynaldo Ortiz Suárez , Leinier Domínguez , Boris Gelfand and Fabiano Caruana , in which he had to admit defeat to the eventual winner Wladimir Kramnik . With this success he was directly qualified for the 2015 edition . There he prevailed in the first four rounds against Isan Reynaldo Ortiz Suárez, Gabriel Sarkissjan , Evgeni Tomaschewski and Wesley So , but failed in the quarterfinals to Anish Giri . In 2017 , after victories over Muhammed Khusenkhojaev , Boris Gratschow , Alex Lenderman , Alexander Grishchuk and Pjotr Swidler, he again reached the semifinals, in which he lost to the eventual winner Levon Aronjan .

At the rapid and blitz chess world championships 2015 in Berlin from October 10th to 14th, Vachier-Lagrave remained in the three-day rapid chess world championships over 15 rounds after defeats at the end of the first day against Rustam Kasimdzhanov and Bartosz Soćko on the two following days without losing a game and reached with 10 points and the same number of points as the fifth placed Dmitry Bocharov still rank 11. Vachier-Lagrave finished
the first day of the blitz chess world championship, in which he won nine of eleven games and only lost the sixth against Magnus Carlsen with the black pieces, with 9, 5 points in the lead with half a point ahead of Carlsen. He extended his lead to 1.5 points by the 17th round, but then lost a key game with white against Yuri Vovk and the next game with black stones against Vassily Ivanchuk . Finally, he won the silver medal by beating Kasimdzhanov in the last round with Black.

In July 2016, Vachier-Lagrave won the grandmaster tournament of the Dortmund Chess Days with one round to go ahead of Wladimir Kramnik and Fabiano Caruana, the multiple winners in Dortmund.

In August 2017, Vachier-Lagrave prevailed against most of the world's top players at the Sinquefield Cup , beating world champion Magnus Carlsen , among others .

Elo development

This graph shows Vachier-Lagrave's Elo development since 2001:

**Elo development**

National team

Vachier-Lagrave represented France at the 2006 Chess Olympiads in Turin , 2008 in Dresden , 2010 in Khanty-Mansiysk , 2012 in Istanbul and 2014 in Tromsø . In 2007, 2011 , 2013 and 2015 he played in the French selection at the European Team Championship and achieved second place with the team as the greatest success in 2013. In the individual evaluation, he reached second place on the top board in 2015.

societies

Taking a deep breath at the 2018 Bundesliga finals in Berlin: in eleven season games for OSG Baden-Baden with five wins without a loss

In the French team championship Vachier-Lagrave played for the first time in the 2001/02 season with Clichy-Echecs-92 in the National I, the top division at the time. From 2003 to 2007 he played for the Paris Chess Club (until 2006 NAO Paris ), with whom he became French team champion in 2004 , 2005 and 2006 , from 2007 to 2011 for Évry Grand Roque , with whom he became champion in 2009 . From 2011 to 2017 he played again for Clichy-Echecs-92 , with whom he became champions in 2012 , 2013 , 2014 , 2016 and 2017 , since 2019 he has played for Asnières - Le Grand Echiquier . With Clichy he also took part in the European Club Cup 2013 and achieved the second best individual result on the first board. In the German Federal Chess League he played from the 2007/08 season to the 2014/15 season for SV Mülheim-Nord , with which he also took part in the 2008 European Club Cup. He has been playing for OSG Baden-Baden since the 2016/17 season and became German team champion with them in 2017, 2018 and 2019 . In the British Four Nations Chess League , Vachier-Lagrave played in the 2011/12 , 2013/14 and 2015/16 seasons for Guildford A&DC , with which he won the competition in 2014 and 2016, in the 2009 Russian team championship for Ekonomist-1 and Saratov 2013 for Belorechensk University . In the Spanish team championship , Vachier-Lagrave played for the Sestao Naturgas Energia XT from 2010 to 2013 and was the Spanish team champion with this in 2012 and 2013 . Vachier-Lagrave also took part in the European Club Cup in 2010 with SOCAR Baku and in 2014 and 2015 with Obiettivo Risarcimento Padova .

Game example

Caruana - Vachier Lagrave

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

End position after 42 ... De6

Vachier-Lagrave won the following game with the black pieces at the Dortmund Schachtagen 2016 against Caruana.

Caruana - Vachier-Lagrave 0: 1

Dortmund, July 9, 2016

Sicilian Defense ( Najdorf Variation ), B90

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. f3 e5 7. Nb3 Be6 8. Be3 Be7 9. Qd2 0–0 10. 0–0 Nbd7 11. g4 b5 12. h4 Nb6 13. Qf2 Rb8 14. g5 Nfd7 15. f4 exf4 16. Bxf4 Rc8 17. Nd5 Nxd5 18. exd5 Bg4 19. Be2 Bxe2 20. Qxe2 Re8 21. Qf3 Qc7 22. Nd4 Nb6 23. The1 Bf8 24.Rxe8 Rxe8 25.Nf5 Qc4 26.b3 Qb4 27.c3 Rc8 28.Rd3 Nxd5 29. Bd2 Nb6 30. Kb1 Qc5 31. Be3 Qc7 32. Qf4 Re8 33. h5 Re6 34. Kc2 Qc6 35.Bxb6 Qxb6 36.Rf3 Qb7 37. Ne3 Re4 38.Qg3 Re5 39.Qf4 Rxg5 40.h6 gxh6 41.Rf2 Qd7 42.Nf5 Qe6 0: 1