Alexander Morozevich
- October 17, 2025
Participant in the 2007 World Championship
Ranking: world number two for two months in 2008
Highest FIDE Elo Rating: 2788
Tournament Career: winner of six super-tournaments:
2x winner of the Russian Championship
3x winner of the Biel Chess Festival
winner of Tashkent 2012
Chess Olympiads: three gold, one silver, and one bronze team medal
What earned him this:
Alexander Morozevich is part of a strong Russian generation of chess players, which includes world champion Kramnik, Svidler, and Grischuk. Morozevich reached the second place in the world in 2008, and his highest FIDE rating climbed to nearly 2790. Besides two Russian championship titles, his favorite tournament was the Biel Festival, where he triumphed three times. In 2005, he participated in the FIDE World Championship (fourth place), and two years later in the unified World Championship (sixth place).
Morozevich was the first to defeat Vladimir Kramnik after he became world champion. Besides first places, he had many high placements in prestigious tournaments in Linares and Wijk aan Zee.
In recent years, he is no longer a very active player, but still, almost at fifty, his name can be found in the FIDE ranking, at the seventieth position.
Why he isn’t higher:
Despite briefly holding the second place in the world, he never significantly approached winning the world championship title. Something was always missing for him to match stars like Anand, Kramnik, and Topalov.
Best Games:
Alexander Morozevich vs Victor Bologan
Sochi 2004
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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.