Peter Leko

Peter Leko (Lékó Péter; born September 8, 1979) is a Hungarian chess grandmaster and commentator.

His first coach Tibor Károlyi began work with him in 1989, ending three months before Leko became a grandmaster.

As a junior player, Leko competed in several age categories in the World Youth Chess Championship, winning bronze in the under-10 section in 1989, bronze in the under-12 in 1990, fourth place in the under-14 in 1992, silver in the under-14 in 1993 and gold in the under-16 in 1994.

Leko earned the International Master title in 1992.

His norms came at a First Saturday tournament in Budapest and Leon (sharing third place with Anatoly Karpov and Veselin Topalov) in 1993, and shared third place at Hoogovens in 1994.

He became the world's youngest grandmaster in 1994.

In 1994 he became a Grandmaster at the age of 14 years, 4 months and 22 days, at the time the youngest to have done so, breaking the record previously held by Judit Polgár.

Leko showed his class in winning at Copenhagen in 1995 with 8 points out of 11 games.

Soon after, Leko competed at Dortmund where he shared third place (5 points out of 9 games) with Vassily Ivanchuk, backing up his new world ranking, placing him 55th with 2605 Elo.

At Belgrade, a last round loss to Ivanchuk pushed him down to eighth place.

He slipped to last place in Dortmund in 1996 but recovered with fourth place in Vienna (5/9).

In 1997, Leko won in Cienfuegos (5/9) and Yopal (6½/9) and took fourth place at the traditional Tilburg chess tournament (7/11) establishing him as a rising star, climbing to 16th in the world rankings in the January 1998 list.

They later reunited in 1998 until the end of 2000.

Leko also worked with International Master Gaspar Mathe when he was ten years old.

Leko continued his rise up the rankings with second place (7/11) behind Viswanathan Anand at Tilburg in 1998, fourth place (5/9) in Dortmund and fourth place (6½/14) at Linares in early 1999.

Leko's run of form culminated in achieving his first major tournament win (5/7) at Dortmund, half a point ahead of Vladimir Kramnik.

It was at this tournament that he met his future wife, Sofia.

He made his first entry into World Championship tournaments at the FIDE World Chess Championship 1999 held in Las Vegas, defeating Christian Bauer 1½-½ but losing to eventual quarter-finalist Sergei Movsesian after rapid tiebreaks 2½-1½.

In January 2000, Leko faced the winner, FIDE World Champion Alexander Khalifman in a six-game match held in Budapest, which he won 4½-1½.

Leko followed up his victory by sharing second place (8/13) with Kramnik and Anand at Corus behind a dominant Garry Kasparov, sharing last place (4½/10) at Linares and sharing second place (5/8) with Kramnik at Dortmund.

At the FIDE World Chess Championship 2000 held in New Delhi (rounds 1-6) and Tehran (final), Leko was knocked out in the third round by Khalifman (4½-3½) after "sudden death" tiebreaks.

In 2001, Leko posted solid results in Corus (6½/13), Linares (4½/10), third place in Dortmund (5½/10) and winning an eight-game Chess 960 (Fischer Random Chess) match against Michael Adams at Mainz.

The year was rounded off with an early exit in the second round of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2002, held in Moscow, at the hands of Ashot Anastasian (2½-1½) after rapid tiebreaks.

Leko started 2002 solidly with a sixth-place finish (7/13) at Corus, sharing third place (4½/9) in the NAO Masters held in Cannes and second place (7/9) at Essen behind Vadim Zvjaginsev.

Under the terms of the Prague Agreement signed in May 2002, "The Dortmund winner will play the Classical World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik and the present FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov will play Garry Kasparov, the current World's number one rated player".

The Dortmund Chess Meeting was held in June 2002 with the format a two-stage event, with two-four player groups played as double round robins, with the two top players from each group progressing to a knockout stage determining the winner.

Leko qualified comfortably from the B Group in second place to Evgeny Bareev and faced Alexei Shirov in a four-game match.

This ended early with the score 2½-½ in Leko's favour.

In the final of the Tournament Leko met Veselin Topalov, who had been in good form in the run up to the tournament but had a draining match which had gone to tiebreaks against Bareev in the semi-finals.

Leko has been ranked as high as fourth in the FIDE world rankings, which he first achieved in April 2003.

Peter Leko was born into an ethnic Hungarian family in the city of Subotica, Yugoslavia, but moved to Szeged when he was one year old.

He was taught chess by his father shortly before he turned seven and took part in tournaments from the age of nine.

His Candidates triumph was followed up by leading the Hungarian team on board one to team silver in the 35th Chess Olympiad with an unbeaten run, along with sharing first (7/12) at Linares in early 2003 with Kramnik, half a point ahead of Anand and Kasparov, notably ending a ten super-tournament winning streak by Kasparov.

He narrowly missed winning the Classical World Chess Championship 2004: the match was drawn 7–7 and so Vladimir Kramnik retained the title.

The match was won by Leko 2½-1½, ensuring he became the official challenger to Vladimir Kramnik for the Classical World Chess Championship 2004.

He also came fifth in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 and fourth in the World Chess Championship 2007.

Leko has achieved victories in many major chess tournaments, including the annual tournaments at Dortmund, Linares, Wijk aan Zee and the Tal Memorial in Moscow.

He won two team silver medals and an individual gold medal representing Hungary at eight Chess Olympiads as well as team bronze and silver and an individual silver medal at three European Team Championships.

This was shortly followed up by second place at the 12th Amber Melody tournament (Blind 6/11, Rapid 7½/11) a point behind Anand, and a solid result (5/9) in Budapest.

At Dortmund, Leko disappointed with 4/10, considered to be due to the difficulties regarding the organising of the match with Kramnik.