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These famous people not only were avid chess players, but established the following ratings. I'm not sure why, but leftist dictators and revolutionaries seem to be unusually good chess players. Alan Alda (actor) ...
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Garry Kasparov, originally named Weinstein, was born on April 13, 1963. In 1976, he was the strongest player in the world under age 13. He became a grandmaster at 17, the youngest Soviet champion at 18 and the youngest world champion&n...
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Amon Simutowe, born in 1982, is a chess player from Zambia who made his 3rd Grandmaster norm at Arnheim, Netherlands in August, 2007. He is the first sub-Saharan African to become a Grandmaster. His current Elo rating is 2421.&nbs...
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Renier Gonzales, born in 1972, is a chess player from Miami (originally from Cuba) who has made his 3rd and final Grandmaster norm in Spain (his first GM norm was at Foxwoods Open 2004; his 2nd GM norm was at Lindsborg 2004). He st...
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Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, born October 21, 1990, is a French Grandmaster. In 2002, he was 2nd in the World Under-14 Championship. In 2005, he became a Grandmaster at the age of 14 years, 4 months, the 7th youngest GM in history and the 2nd young...
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Boris Gelfand is a Grandmaster (1989) from Belorussia who moved to Israel. In 1988 he tied for first in the World Junior Championship. In 1995 he lost to Karpov in the Candidates final match. He has won two Interzonals (1990 at M...
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Viswanathan (Vishy) Anand, born on Dec 11, 1969, is India's first Grandmaster (1988, at the age of 18) who won the World Junior Championship in 1987. In 1983, he won the National Sub-Junior Chess Championship with a perfec...
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The first organization to adopt a numerical rating system was the Correspondence Chess League of America in 1933. The first USCF rating list appeared in the November 20, 1950 issue of Chess Life. Ken Harkness rated 2,306 players from e...
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Levon Aronian, born Oct 6, 1982, is a Grandmaster (2001) from Armenia. He learned chess at the age of 9. In 1994, he won the World Under-12 Chess Championship with an 8 out 9 score. He won the 2002 World Junior Chess Champi...
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Magnus Carlsen, Norwegian child chess prodigy, was born Nov 30, 1990, and gained the Grandmaster title (2004) at the age of 13 years, 4 months and 27 days. He became the 2nd youngest GM in chess history, behind only Sergey Karjakin and Pari...
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