Étienne Bacrot


Étienne Bacrot is a French chess grandmaster and former chess prodigy.
He competed at the Candidates Matches in 2007 and won the Aeroflot Open in 2009. He passed 2700 FIDE rating in 2004 and in January 2005 he became the first French player to enter the top 10.
Bacrot won individual bronze medal at the 37th Chess Olympiad in 2006 for his performance on board one, as well as four medals at the World Team Championships.

Chess career

He started playing at age 4. By 10, young Bacrot was already winning junior competitions and in 1996, at 13 years of age, he won against Vasily Smyslov. He became a Grandmaster in March 1997 at the age of 14 years and 2 months, making him the youngest person to that date to have held the title. He was coached previously by Josif Dorfman.
Bacrot served as one of the four advisors to the world team in the 1999 Kasparov versus the World event.
He has a son, Alexandre, with Nathalie Bonnafous.

Annual hometown game

Bacrot has played several matches against prominent players in his home town of Albert. In 1996 he beat Vasily Smyslov 5–1, in 1997 lost to Viktor Korchnoi 4–2, in 1998 defeated Robert Hübner 3½–2½, in 1999 lost to Alexander Beliavsky 3½–2½, in 2000 lost to Nigel Short 4–2, in 2001 tied 3–3 with Emil Sutovsky, in 2002 beat Boris Gelfand 3½–2½, and in 2004 won against Ivan Sokolov 3½–2½.

Notable results