Levon Aronian (born October 6, 1982) is an Armenian Grandmaster. On the January 2008 FIDE list, he had an Elo 2739, making him number 10 in the World and Armenia's number one. He is winner of the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk 2005 and Olympiad Champion from Turin 2006.
An early sign of his ability came when he won the 1994 World Under-12 championship in Szeged with 8/9, ahead of future luminaries including Etienne Bacrot, Ruslan Ponomariov, Francisco Vallejo Pons and Alexander Grischuk.
In 2002 he became World Junior Champion, scoring 10/13 and finishing ahead of Artyom Timofeev, Bu Xiangzhi, Pentala Harikrishna and others.
In 2004 he progressed to the 3rd round of the 2004 World Championship before being knocked out by Pavel Smirnov.
In 2005 he was part of a five-way tie for first place at the GibTelecom Masters in Gibraltar with Zahar Efimenko, Kiril Georgiev, Alexei Shirov and Emil Sutovsky. In December 2005 Levon Aronian beat Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine in the final round to win the World Cup in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia. After a draw in two regular games, Aronian won both Rapid games to win the event and emerge undefeated in seven rounds.
In March 2006 he took sole first place at the annual Linares chess tournament, half a point ahead of Teimour Radjabov and 19th World Champion Veselin Topalov.
In January 2007 Aronian shared first place at the 19th category Corus chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee along with Veselin Topalov and Teimour Radjabov.
In May 2007 he defeated Vladimir Kramnik 4-2 in a rapid match.
His 2005 World Cup victory qualified him for the Candidates Tournament of the World Championship 2007, being played in May-June 2007. In this tournament he played GM Magnus Carlsen, and they played 3-3 in the initial six games, then 2-2 in the rapid chess, and finally Levon Aronian won 2-0 in the blitz chess. After this victory he met Alexei Shirov in the finals, who he defeated 3.5-2.5 in 6 games. This qualified him for the final stage of the championship, which was played in Mexico. Aronian scored 6 points out of 14, placing him 7th.
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Name
|
Total
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Win
|
Loss
|
Draw
|
View
|
Download
|
|
Topalov
|
9
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2
|
3
|
4
|
 |
 |
|
Ivanchuk
|
13
|
2
|
7
|
4
|
|
|
|
Radjabov
|
7
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2
|
0
|
5
|
|
|
|
Cheparinov
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
|
Bu Xiangzhi
|
6
|
2
|
0
|
4
|
|
|
| Place |
Category
|
Score
|
Rank
|
| Bled SLO 1999 | 14 | 7,5/10 | 1 |
| Yerevan 1999 | 10 | 7,5/11 | 1-2 |
| Lausanne SUI 2001 | 1 | ||
| Bastia FRA 2003 | 1 | ||
| Stepanakert ARM 2005 | 17 | 6/9 | 1 |
| Khanty Mansyisk World Cup 2005 | 1 | ||
| Morelia/Linares 2006 | 20 | 8,5/14 | 1 |
| Moscow RUS 2006 | 20 | 5,5/9 | 1-3 |
| Wijk an Zee NED 2007 | 19 | 8,5/13 | 1-3 |
| Wijk an Zee NED 2008 | 20 | 8/13 | 1-2 |
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