Junior & Senior World Champions

Both the Junior (under 20) and Senior (60 plus) World Chess Championships recently took place in Argentina and Italy respectively. 

The junior championship was won by 19-year old French GM Vachier Maxime-Lagrave (pictured) with 10.5/13 on a tie break from Belarusian GM Sergei Zhigalko.

A crucial last round win sealed the title for Maxime by the narrowest of margins.  Congratulations Maxime!

Previous world junior champions have included the likes of Boris Spassky (1955), Anatoly Karpov (1969), Yasser Seirawan (1979), Garry Kasparov (1980), Vishy Anand (1987) and Lev Aronian (2002). 

The World Senior Championships were more recently established in 1991, when the inaugural winner was the former world champion Vassily Smyslov.  He was followed by Efim Geller (1992), Mark Taimanov (1993/1994), and last year by Larry Kaufman.

This year the winner was Croatian GM Misa Cebalo with 8.5/11 just edging out Latvian GM Janis Klovans on tie-breaks.  Congratulations Misa!

There were also women's events alongside the junior and senior championships which were won by Swaminathan Soumya and Nona Gaprindashvilli respectively.