Matthias Blübaum

Matthias Blübaum (born 18 April 1997) is a German chess grandmaster.

He won the European Individual Chess Championship in 2022.

Blübaum began playing chess at the age of six and emerged as part of the Prinzengruppe at age twelve.

Matthias Blübaum was born in Lemgo, North Rhine-Westphalia on 18 April 1997, and comes from a chess family.

His father, Karl-Ernst, won the Ostwestfalen Chess Championship several times.

He has three sisters, two of whom competed in the top group of the German Girls' Chess Championship.

Blübaum skipped ahead a year in elementary school and received his Abitur at the age of 17.

he was studying physics and mathematics at Bielefeld University.

The German Chess Federation named Blübaum the U14 Player of the Year of 2011.

Notable achievements in the year were his attainment of the FIDE master title and his third-place finish at the German U18 Chess Championship.

Also in 2011, he placed sixth at the World U14 Chess Championship, scoring 6½/9 (+5–1=3).

Blübaum earned his first international master (IM) norm at the Neckar-Open in April 2011, scoring 6½/9, and his second at the Helmut Kohls Tournament in July 2011, scoring 6/9.

He earned his international master title in 2012 and was awarded the grandmaster title in 2015.

He achieved his final IM norm at the German Chess Championship in March 2012, scoring 5½/9.

He was awarded the title by FIDE in April 2012, at the age of 14.

He participated in the World Junior Chess Championship in August, placing twenty-fifth with a score of 8/13 (+6–3=4),

and in the World U18 Chess Championship in November, scoring 7/11 (+5–2=4) for a fourteenth-place finish.

Blübaum earned his first two GM norms in the 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 Chess Bundesliga seasons, with scores of 6½/9 and 8/12, respectively.

He placed twelfth in the 2013 German Chess Championship, scoring 5½/9 (+3–1=5).

In September 2014, he competed in the 2nd Grenke Chess Classic, scoring 3½/7 (+2–2=3) for a fifth-place finish.

He scored his first victory over a 2700+ opponent in this event, defeating the German No. 1 Arkadij Naiditsch in the second round.

Later in September, Blübaum competed again in the World U18 Chess Championship, placing fourth with a score of 7½/11 (+5–1=5).

At the 2014 Bavarian Chess Championship, held from 25 October to 2 November, he achieved his third GM norm, scoring 7/9.

He earned an additional GM norm at the German Chess Championship in November 2014, scoring 6/9.

A member of the German team that won the 2015 European Youth Team Chess Championship, he has since represented his nation at the European Team Chess Championship and Chess Olympiad.

He was officially awarded the GM title by FIDE in April 2015, at the age of 18.

In July 2015, he competed for Germany on board 1 at the European Youth Team Chess Championship.

He scored 5½/7 (+4–0=3), helping Germany win the tournament.

In September, he placed third at the World Junior Chess Championship with 9/13 (+6–1=6), one point behind Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Mikhail Antipov.

Antipov won the tournament due to a better tiebreak score than Duda.

The group, consisting of Blübaum, Rasmus Svane, Dennis Wagner, and Alexander Donchenko, completed the objective set for them in 2016, when Svane earned his final grandmaster (GM) norm and thus became the fourth and final member of the group to achieve the title of GM.

Blübaum recorded several tournament victories in 2016.

He won the Grenke Chess Open held in March, scoring 7½/9 (+6–0=3).

Vladimir Fedoseev, Nikita Vitiugov, Miloš Perunović, Ni Hua and Francisco Vallejo Pons also scored 7½/9; Blübaum won due to performing best on the tiebreak system.

In April, he finished clear first in the Accentus Young Masters tournament with 7/9 (+6–1=2), half a point ahead of Benjámin Gledura and Noël Studer.

He won the Xtracon Chess Open in July, scoring 8/10 (+6–0=4).

In a 2020 interview, he stated that he was still unsure whether he would become a professional chess player.

As of 2021, he was studying for his master's degree in mathematics.

Blübaum learned to play chess when he was six years old, and began a systematic training schedule at the age of eight.

He received wide attention at the age of 12 as part of the Prinzengruppe, a group of four young, talented German players ("princes") who were projected to become grandmasters ("kings") by German national junior coach Bernd Vökler.