GMLevon Aronian

Levon Aronian grew up in Yerevan, the son of an engineer and a physicist. His sister taught him chess at nine. He won the World Under-12 Championship in 1994. Melikset Khachiyan was among his early coaches, while Ashot Nadanian became a longstanding collaborator. He became a grandmaster in 2000. In 2002 he won both the Armenian championship and the World Junior Championship.

Aronian won the World Cup in 2005 and again in 2017. He helped Armenia take Olympiad gold in 2006, 2008 and 2012. The team also won the World Team Championship in 2011. His tournament victories include Linares, Wijk aan Zee and the Sinquefield Cup. In 2017 he won Norway Chess after defeating Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and Sergey Karjakin.

He became world blitz champion in 2010. Earlier, he had won Chess960 world titles in 2006 and 2007. He reached world number two in 2014 and competed in several Candidates cycles. In 2021 he moved to the United States and began representing his new home internationally. He won the WR Chess Masters in 2023 and the American Cup in 2024.