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YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Member of Men's Chess National Team of Armenia Levon Aronian and Member of Women’s Chess National Team of Armenia Lilit Mkrtchian shared points with the opponents in the penultimate round of the European Chess Club Cup 2015.
Grandmaster Levon Aronian of “Siberia” team drew with Anish Giri. “Siberia” defeated Azerbaijani team “Socar” with 3,5-2,5.
Lilit Mkrtchian shared the points with Dina Belenkaya and “Ugra” team defeated “SPG” with 3,5-0,5.
Leading Armenian chess player Levon Aronian is in the team “Siberia” with Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk, Wang Yu. Lilit Mkrtchyan’s teammates in “Ugra” are Anna Ushenina, Natalia Pogonina and Marina Guseva.
Aronian has been the leading Armenian chess player since the early 2000s. His popularity in Armenia has led to him being called a celebrity, and a hero. He was named the best sportsman of Armenia in 2005 and was awarded the title of Honoured Master of Sport of the Republic of Armenia in 2009.
Aronian was born on 6 October 1982 in Yerevan, Armenia (then part of the Soviet Union), to Seda Aronova-Avagyan, an Armenian mining engineer, and Grigory Leontievich Aronov, a Jewish physicist. Talking about his background, Aronian stated in an interview, "I feel much more Armenian than Jewish, although there are sides to me which are more Jewish culturally, involving the arts and music."
He was taught to play chess by his sister, Lilit, at the age of nine. His first coach was the Grandmaster Melikset Khachiyan. An early sign of his ability came when he won the 1994 World Youth Chess Championship (under-12) in Szeged with 8/9, ahead of future luminaries Étienne Bacrot, Ruslan Ponomariov, Francisco Vallejo Pons, and Alexander Grischuk.
Lilit Mkrtchian was born 9 August 1982. She is an Armenian grandmaster and four-time Armenian Women's chess champion.
In 2002, Mkrtchian won the silver medal in the European Individual Chess Championship in Varna, Bulgaria, scoring 8½/11 points. She participated in the European Team Chess Championship 2003 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, helping Armenia win the gold medal. She took the bronze medal at the seventh European Individual Championship 2006 held in Kuşadası, Turkey, scoring 7½/11 points.
In December 2009, she took tenth position in the list of best sportspeople of Armenia in 2009.
In 2013 she came third at the European Individual Chess Championship for women.
Lilit won her first individual gold medal on the second board at the Women World Team Chess Championships in China 2015.