Young Superstars: Teimour Radjabov

Teimour Radjabov was born March 12, 1987 in Baku. He started playing chess when he was four years old and won the European Under-18 Championship in 1999. In 2001, at the age of 14 years and 14 days, he became the youngest International Grandmaster in history, and in January 2002, he entered FIDE's World Top 100 rating list at #93. He has remained on this list ever since.  In July, this year, he was the top Junior and #9 in the world.

He became the youngest player ever to defeat longtime World Champion Garry Kasparov in 2003. That same year he tallied wins against FIDE World Champions Viswanathan Anand and Ruslan Ponomariov.
In 2004, he made it to the semifinals of the FIDE World Championship Knockout Tournament, but lost to the British player Michael Adams. In 2005 he was 2nd in the 6th European Individual Championship and 1st at Dos Hermanas and in 2006 he was 1st at Cap D'Agde and joint second at the prestigious Linares supertournament.  Radjabov represented his native Azerbaijan at the 37th Chess Olympiad in May and June 2006, playing board one for the Azeri team  In 2007, he shared first place at Corus with Veselin Topalov and Levon Aronian.

As White, Radjabov plays 1.d4 65% of the time and splits 1.Nf3 and 1.e4 the rest of the time.  Against 1.e4, Teimour plays either the French Steinitz (C11) or Sicilian (B30-33); and is one of the leading King's Indian players against 1.d4.  Twenty more Radjabov puzzles are found at http://www.wtharvey.com/radj.html

Away from the chessboard, Radjabov was appointed as the UNICEF National Goodwill Ambassador for Azerbaijan in 2006. Teimour said he will advocate for the cause of the universal salt iodization in the country.