LEVON ARONIAN – A FUTURE WORLD CHAMPION?

Chessbase News, Germany
June 11 2008

He is not the usual child prodigy. His rise into the upper echelons
of world chess in the last few years has nonetheless been dramatic,
and our Playchess lecturer Dennis Monokroussos believes that top
Armenian GM Levon Aronian has as good a shot as anyone to become a
world champion sometime in the near future. Dennis illustrates this
in his Wednesday night show.

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

We continue our series on the up-and-comers of today with a look at a
player who, though still young, isn’t a child prodigy. Nevertheless,
the rise of Levon Aronian to the upper echelons of world chess has
been dramatic the last two-three years, and he probably has as good a
shot as anyone to become a world champion sometime in the near future.

In support of this claim, we’ll look at his win over the current
world champion, Viswanathan Anand, from the 2007 Morelia/Linares
tournament. This game has been ranked highly in various 2007 game of
the year contests, and with very good reason. Aronian developed what
had been thought an innocuous opening approach into a strategically
dangerous idea, outplayed Anand in the early endgame, and then devised
an incredibly deep sacrificial idea where his rook and split passers
were more valuable than Black’s rook and two minor pieces! Start
to finish, it’s a great effort by Aronian, and the theoretical
significance along with the brilliant combination referred to above
make this a game very much worth seeing.

Since watching is free, there’s all the more reason to join me
this Wednesday night (today, for many of you) at 9 p.m. ET on the
playchess.com server. Hope to see you there!

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