Vladimir Akopian
- September 23, 2025
Finalist of the FIDE World Championship Knockout 1999
Highest FIDE Elo Rating: 2713
Ranking: highest 11th in the world
Tournament Career: won well-attended Swiss tournaments, but no super-tournament
Chess Olympiads: three gold and one bronze team medals for Armenia
Why he deserves it:
It is rare to find a player in this ranking who never made it into the world’s top ten throughout their career, even though Akopian was on its very threshold. It is also rare to see someone here who hasn’t won any super-tournaments in modern times, when there have been many and the chance to win was much higher than, say, in the nineteenth century. Yet Akopian has his place here because he timed his form at the right time and place.
You surely know that from 1993 to 2006, the chess world was divided and had two world champions. FIDE held its world championships at the turn of the millennium in a format similar to today’s World Cup, which you can follow this November. It was a large knockout tournament – a bracket system, as we know from tennis grand slams. The prestige of these tournaments is not generally considered as high today as to match the classical world championship in match form, as we know it from the line from Steinitz to Gukesh. The element of chance and the art of timing form for a single tournament is one of the reasons for this. Nevertheless, it was still a World Championship, and we cannot completely ignore it in this series.
The Armenian Akopian, seeded thirty-first, sailed to the final, eliminating several players along the way, whom we will hear about in this series…
Akopian also won several open tournaments played in the Swiss system, such as the Aeroflot Open or the Gibraltar Chess Festival.
Why he isn’t higher:
Akopian never won a closed grandmaster tournament, which I call super-tournaments in this series, nor did he manage to break into the world’s top ten rankings. In the tough competition of chess stars over the 175 years covered by this series, being placed last is the best he can hope for. On the other hand, what wouldn’t most of us give to be on a similar ranking in the last place?
Best Game:
Vladimir Akopian vs Vladimir Kramnik (then World Champion)
Tata Steel Masters 2004
Share
Miroslav Janeček graduated in English Philology at Palacký University Olomouc. Currently he works in Prague as a content editor for a large marketing company. His roots are in Opava - the historic and cultural centre of the Czech part of Silesia. That city is also the home of Slezan Opava, the chess club where Miroslav started to play chess, later went on to work as a youth coach and which he to this day proudly represents. As an aspiring chess publicist, he is the main author of articles on ChessDB.cz. In his free time, in addition to chess and writing, he also devotes himself to racket sports, history, and literature.