He has the recognition of being one of the best players around, yet this immense talent culminates in an extremely unpredictable personality. He can be flying high and all of a sudden drop 50 plus places. He has a massive fan base due to his unique opening moves such as the ones – Chigorin Defense, as well as the latest one – the Albin Counter gambit. His aggressive style of play makes him popular; yet recently his complaint to an interviewer that he must be boring, because he cannot find any game of his among the greatest games ever played. His style of play leads to wins or losses and he is the GM with the least draws. Due to this aggressive style of play, he is also very inconsistent. During the 2011 World Cup, he surprised everyone by offering his opponent Grischuk, a draw after only 12 moves. This does not matter; Aleksandr Morozevich is exciting and at his best the best in the world. He can tear any field apart on his day, yet he can lose interest fast as well. It is as if he has a split personality. In 2011 he, nearly retired after accepting a job to coach Zhu Chen, the Qatar based female chess player. He is a sportsman as well as artist alike, yet he places too much pressure on himself.
He gained respect as a 17-year old after winning the Lloyds Bank tournament in London with an amazing 9.5/10 points. In 1997, he was the top seed at the World Junior Chess Championship but lost in the final. In 1999, he entered his first super tournament and finished fourth. In 2000, he finished fourth in the Corus Chess Tournament, which Kasparov won. He was Russian champion in 1998. Sadly, it took him eight years to be Russian champion again. In the same year, he finished sixth in the FIDE world championship. He achieved a hat trick of wins in Biel in 2003, 2004 and 2006.
He was the first player to defeat the newly crowned world champion Vladimir Kramnik in 2001. He won the Ciudad de Pamplona tournament in 2006 where he came second behind Magnus Carlsen. In his Russian championship win in 2007, he had six straight wins, which is an amazing achievement at any level. Not only is he a professional chess player, but he is also an author. He also released a book titled “The Chigorin defense according to Morozevich” in the same year.
There was a review by the St. Louis chess club stating that the chigorin defense started out with the moves 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6. It seemed weird to most chess players to bring the knight out to c6 on move two, but to the legendary Chigorin it was the only way to play. Chigorin loved active piece play owning to his uncanny attacking instinct. According to the Chigorin defense, the quicker all the black’s pieces were got, the better the performance was. He often obtained a lead in development in his own chigorin games, which seemed weird since he was playing black!
The book provides an extensive coverage of the opening lines. Morozevich claims that he has published all of his analysis because he is making a switch to other openings, so has no reason to hold anything back from the reader. Indeed the book is rather heavy with variations, many worked out by Morozevich and his trainers. Most of the games are Morozevich’s, hence the title. If you are interested in an exciting and active defense for black, then the chigorin is for you.”
In June 2008, Morozevich won the Bosna tournament with a margin of 1½ points ahead of second place. In 2008, he was leading the Tal memorial and even climbed to number one in the world for a while only to fall again after finishing fourth.
In 2011, he won the Russian Higher League championship with an impressive eight from 11 points. This allowed him entry into the Russian Championship Super Final in 2011 where he placed second. A month later Aleksandr Morozevich won the Saratov Governor’s Cup in Russia.
He excelled in team competitions. The Russian team won the gold medal in the Chess Olympiad three times and in 2005, they won the gold in the World Team Championship.
His best game was organized between Ljubojevic, Ljubomir – Morozevich, Alexander which took the second player forty three moves in order to win the match.
He is also very good at blind chess and won the tournament a couple of times. As unpredictable as he is which goes totally against the cool, calm and collected nature of chess players, he will stay a force to be reckoned with for many years. In fact, he is described as one of the top international blind chess players. He has taken part in the Amber blindfold tournaments many times. Every time in the tournament, there were lots of elite chess players, so it was very competitive. He got several achievements in this type of tournament. He was the champion in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008 and his scores were 9/11, 8.5/11, 9.5/11 and 6/11 respectively. He got the second prize in 2003, 2005 and 2007 and his scores were 7/11, 6/11 and 7/11 respectively.
Aleksandr Morozevich is a true chess fanatic. He loves playing chess so much that he once mentioned that his greatest fear was to be unable to remember how pieces move when he woke up one day. He also loves reading books about chess. Five favorite books of his are “Manual for beginner”, “Combinations”, “Psycho-analysis of chess play”, “Defeat” and “Winning Pawn Structures”, whose authors are Pozharsky, Blokh, Herbstman, Zagainov and Baburin respectively. He has his unique chess playing style – laid-back, not worrying about what his opponent will do as if he is taking a break.
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