Alexander Khalifman
- September 25, 2025
FIDE World Champion 1999 – 2000, winner of the 1999 tournament
Highest Elo rating: 2702
Ranking: highest 10th place
Tournament career: winner of three super-tournaments:
winner of the 1999 World Championship
winner of the 1996 Russian Championship
Groningen 1990 (but lost the tiebreak)
Chess Olympiads: three gold team medals
Why he deserved it:
Anyone who read the previous two articles and knows a bit about chess history might have guessed what would come today. Alexander Khalifman’s greatest career success is also linked to the FIDE World Championship knockout format. He is the winner of the 1999 edition, where he defeated Vladimir Akopian in the final. On his way to the final, he overcame players such as Gata Kamsky, Judit Polgar, and Boris Gelfand. His highest FIDE rating is slightly lower than Akopian’s or Kasimdzhanov’s, but unlike them, he managed (albeit very briefly) to reach the world’s top 10 and also won something other than the mentioned championship. He won the Russian Championship in 1996, which was a tournament played in the Swiss system but very strong. Championships of countries like the USSR (later Russia) or the United States are considered super-tournaments in this series because their participation is much stronger than a regular national championship in other countries. He wasn’t very successful in closed super-tournaments, with a shared first place in Groningen being noteworthy. The cherry on top for Khalifman is three gold team medals from the Olympiads. Khalifman was also very successful in open tournaments, winning several of them.
Why he isn’t higher:
Similar to previous players, Khalifman managed to time his form for the FIDE World Championship and win it, but otherwise, he wasn’t particularly successful compared to other players, and without this one success, he would be relatively forgotten today. He briefly warmed up in the world’s top ten, but that is not enough for a higher placement in this competition, of course.
Best game:
Alexander Khalifman vs Yasser Seirawan
Tata Steel Masters 1991
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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.