Peter Svidler

Peter Veniaminovich Svidler (Пётр Вениаминович Свидлер; Pyotr Veniaminovich Svidler, born June 17, 1976, in Leningrad) is a Russian chess grandmaster.He is five-time Russian champion (1994, 1995, 1997, 2003, 2008).He placed shared second (together with Viswanathan Anand) in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 with 8.5 points out of 14 games, finishing 1.5 points behind the winner, Veselin Topalov.In the World Chess Championship 2007, he placed 5th among the eight players.

Svidler learned to play chess when he was six years old. In 1992, he tied for 1st–2nd with Ragim Gasimov in the USSR Junior Open Chess Championship. He became Grandmaster in 1994.

In 2001, he reached the semi-finals of the FIDE World Championship. Andrei Lukin is his coach.

Svidler is a noted exponent of Fischer Random Chess (also called Chess960). He won the first edition of the Chess960 Open held in Mainz, Germany. At the 2003 Mainz Chess Classic, he became Chess960 World Champion by beating Péter Lékó in an eight-game match. He successfully defended his title twice, defeating Levon Aronian in 2004 and Zoltán Almási in 2005, before losing it to Aronian in 2006.

In an interview given for World Chess Network after the World Chess Championship 2005 held in San Luis, he said: "I only prepared seriously for San Luis, and I think it has paid off. But in general I spend most of my spare time with my wife and kids, so my relative success in...
Read More