Happy Birthday Ivan Sokolov
"Today in Chess History" recognizes the births of seven Grandmasters:
- Levente Lengyel of Hungary, whom we featured last year on the "Today's Grandmaster" live stream at twitch.tv/kingsbischop. He was born 6/13/1933; became a GM in 1964; and passed away 8/18/2014.
- Paul Motwani of Scotland, born 1962, GM 1992.
- Vadim Ruban of Russia, born 1964, GM 1991.
- Ivan Sokolov of the Netherlands, born 1968, GM 1987.
- Maxim Pavlov of the Ukraine, born 1974, GM 2014.
- Manuel Pena Gomez of Spain, born 1988, GM 2019.
- Oskar Wieczorek of Poland, born 1994, GM 2019.
Ivan Sokolov was born in Jajce Yugoslavia on June 13th, 1968. Learning the game from his father, Ivan started playing chess when he was six years old. He became a FIDE Master in 1985, an International Master in 1986, and a Grandmaster in 1987.
In 1992 he moved to the Netherlands to get away from his war torn country. He has been one of the elite players in the world for more than two decades now. In 1987 and 1993 he won the Vidmar Memorial. He won the 1988 Yugoslav Championship and in 1995 and 1998 the Dutch Championship. In 1998, he won the tournament in Hastings with a two point margin. He won the super tournament in Sarajevo, Bosnia in 2003.
The following game is a victory over Garry Kasparov. I have included some of Sokolov's own comments .
