Yasser Seirawan

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Yasser Seirawan (born March 24, 1960) is an American chess grandmaster and four-time United States champion.

In 1979, he won the World Junior Chess Championship.

Seirawan is also a published chess author and commentator.

Early life

Seirawan was born in Damascus, Syria. His father was Syrian and his mother, an English nurse from Nottingham, where he spent time in his early childhood. When he was seven years old, his family immigrated to Seattle, Washington, where he attended Queen Anne Elementary School, Meany Middle School, and Garfield High School. He honed his game at the Last Exit on Brooklyn, playing against Latvian-born master Viktors Pupols and six-time Washington State Champion James Harley McCormick.

Personal life

Seirawan is married to Woman FIDE Master Yvette Nagel, the daughter of Dutch politician Jan Nagel.

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Career

At 12, Seirawan began playing chess and at 13, he became the Washington junior champion. He won the World Junior Chess Championship at 19 years old. He won a match against Viktor Korchnoi, who had just barely qualified for a match for the world championship two years ago. Viktor was empressed, and Viktor sent Seirawan to Switzerland, where Korchnoi was preparing for his 1981 world championship match against Anatoly Karpov.

Seirawan qualified for the 1985 and 1988-1990 Candidates Tournaments. He scored 7/15 placing joint 10th in the 1985 tournament in Montpellier, and in the 1988-1990 tournament in St John, a knockout tournament, he was disqualified by Jon Speelman in the preliminary round.

He won a match against Jan Timman sponsored by KRO in 1990 by the score of +3-1=2.

He was the chief editor of the Inside Chess magazine for 12 years. The magazine was sold on the ChessCafe.com website, where old articles were highlighted.

Seirawan played a ten-game match against Michael Adams in Bermuda in 1999. The match was drawn +2–2=6.

Seirawan began a scheme called "Fresh Start" to reunite the chess world, which at the time had two world champions: Ruslan Ponomariov had won the title under FIDE's tutees, while Vladimir Kramnik had defeated Garry Kasparov to take the Classical title. One match between Ponomariov and Kasparov (the world number one), and another between Kramnik and the 2002 Einstein tournament winner Péter Lékó were scheduled in Dortmund. The winners of these competitions will then face each other to determine the undisputed World Champion. All sides approved the so-called "Prague Agreement" on May 6, 2002. The Kramnik-Leko match took place (with Kramnik retaining his crown); the Kasparov-Ponomariov match was cancelled in 2003; but this particular initiative became moot after Kasparov retired in 2005. The FIDE World Chess Championship 2006 between Kramnik and Veselin Topalov reclaimed the world championship title in the end.

Following a string of events, including Seirawan's participation in the Beijing Chess Challenge in September 2003, there have been hints that he would be retiring as a professional athlete. Seirawan had an Elo rating of 2634 on the 2007 FIDE list, ranking him as one of the top 100 chess players in the world and America's number four, behind Hikaru Nakamura, Gata Kamsky, and Alexander Onischuk. In the 2007 FIDE update, he played six games.

Seirawan introduced Seirawan chess or SHARPER chess, a chess variant created in collaboration with Bruce Harper in 2007. SHARPER chess also includes two more pieces, a "hawk" and a "elephant": a rook/knight and a bishop/knight combo that is not available in other variations, the Empress and Princess. The initial position is that of standard chess. Any time the player moves a piece from its starting position, one of the extra pieces in hand can be placed immediately on the square that had just been vacated. In addition, pawns can be converted to a hawk or an elephant instead of the standard ones. On March 31, 2007, a 12-board simultaneous exhibition was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Seirawan moved from hiatus to chess in May 2011, representing the United States team in the world team championship in China, where he claimed silver in first alternate. Against top GMs Judit Polgar and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, he had victories. He only lost one game.

Seirawan claimed the Dutch Open Blitz championship in 2011 and 2012.

Seirawan is well-known for his expert commentary in live broadcasts on the internet at critical events. He has been named as one of the top five Internet broadcasters by chess scholar Edward Winter. In 2019, he joined the Chessbrahs and contributed to the 2019 World Cup coverage.

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