Levon Aronian to participate in Grand Slam

YEREVAN, JULY 22, ARMENPRESS. GM Levon Aronian is going to participate in the Grand Slam Masters Final to be held on September 14-20, 2014 in Bilbao, Spain. The rivals of Aronian will be Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov and Francisco Vallejo Pons. As reports “Armenpress”, the Chess Federation of Armenia stated about this.

Levon Aronian is an Armenian chess Grandmaster. On the May 2012 FIDE list, he was ranked number two in the world and had an Elo rating of 2825, making him the third highest rated player in history.

Aronian won the Chess World Cup 2005. He led the Armenian national team to the Gold medals in the 2006 (Turin), 2008 (Dresden) and 2012 (Istanbul) Chess Olympics and at the World Team Chess Championship in Ningbo 2011. He won the FIDE Grand Prix 2008–2010, qualifying him for the Candidates tournament for the World Chess Championship 2012, where he was knocked out in the first round. He was also World Chess960 Champion in 2006 and 2007, World Rapid Chess Champion in 2009, and World Blitz Chess Champion in 2010.

Levon Aronian was declared the best sportsman of Armenia in 2005 and was awarded the title of "Honoured Master of Sport of the Republic of Armenia" in 2009.