Another big talent from a small country

April 05, 2006
By Suhit Kelkar

MUMBAI: There is a new knight - albeit bespectacled and looking like a pensive software designer - on the round table of the chess elite. He is a 23-year-old Armenian Grandmaster named Levon Aronian. In April, he became the world number three chess player after winning the Linares tournament in March.

Linares is not his sole achievement but it is certainly his greatest so far. Linares is to chess what Wimbledon is to tennis: a fabled tournament played by the world’s best, and Aronian outranked them all. Even current world champion Veselin Topalov. An omen, perhaps?
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Aronian is said to be an ace at blitz play (chess games with very small time limits) and the insane one-minute chess. He is also among the best at Fischerandom Chess, a variant of chess which emphasises creativity and calculation over memorisation of chess theory. Invented by the great Bobby Fischer, Fischerandom is considered by many to be the future of chess play and Aronian will certainly be one of its first heroes.

Looking at his record, it is unlikely that Aronian will ascend to the greatness of Garry Kasparov, Bobby Fischer or display the dazzling tactics of Mikhail ‘The Terrible’ Tal. But he keeps winning, and he is the new celebrity in classical chess. There will be speculation about Aronian’s prospects for the world title.

He has arrived.

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