News

One of the Grandmasters who will come to Banska Stiavnica (July 13, 2019) will play the traditional blind spot on the square with live pieces, will be Sergei Movsesian. Sergei has been the winner of this fight nine times (2005-2008, 2013 and 2015-2018), when he gradually overcame these grandmasters: Igor Stohl, David Navara, Zbynek Hracek, Peter Michalik, 2x Jan Markos (2008 and 2013), Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Milan Pacher and Lubomir Ftacnik. In 2009, his duel with Viktor Laznicka interrupted the unfavorable weather and in 2010 suffered the first defeat in Stiavnica, when starred Hikaru Nakamura from the USA. In 2012, Zoltan Almasi, the Hungarian Grandmaster, was in charge of his strength, but for a few weeks, he had a great revenge. At the Istanbul Chess Olympiad, Sergei won the gold medal with the Armenian team. In the decisive part of the last round of the Olympics, Sergei defeated Zoltan Almasi. In 2014, the superstar Richards Rapport was on top of Sergei's strength, who, after a blindly draw, overtook Sergey in the blitz game. Sergei is the icon of the event, and in 2019 he will play a traditional simultaneous play on the square.

Sergei Movsesian was born on 3.11.1978 and grew up as an Armenian in Georgia, he learned how to play chess at 4 years old. As a 15 year old he moved to Czech republic, where to this day he currently resides. In 2002 he gained a Slovak citizenship and was by far the strongest player in Slovakia. Since 2011 he represents his ancestors, Armenia, whilst maintaining his Slovak citizenship.
In 1999 he managed to get into the quarter-finals of the world championship in Las Vegas. He has won a wide range of strong tournaments like: Sarajevo (2002 and 2007), St. Petersburg (2007), Karlove Vary (2007), and many others. He played in the Slovak championship twice (2002 and 2007) and on both occasions he came out on top. In the European championship in Plovdiv (2008) he won bronze. During the world team championship in China (2011) he won a gold medal, that same year he also won the European club cup (playing for St. Petersburg). Next year (2012) he won gold medal in the Chess Olympiad (Istanbul). He has achieved strong results in Fischer chess where in the world championship (Mainz 2009) he won third place.
His peak rating was in the January 2009 Fide rating list where he had 2751, a rating that entitled him to be in the world top ten. Sergei is a polyglot, he speaks 9 languages: English, German, Russian, Serbio-Croatian, Czech, Polish, Armenian, Georgian, and of course Slovak.