GM Vladimir Fedoseev
Bio
Vladimir Fedoseev is a Russian chess grandmaster and one of the world’s 100 highest-rated players by FIDE. In 2022, he stopped representing Russia as part of the fallout of the invasion of Ukraine. He transferred federations to Slovenia in July 2023.
Early Life And Career
Fedoseev was born in Saint Petersburg in 1995, sharing a birthplace with several top chess players throughout history such as world champion GM Boris Spassky, GM Viktor Korchnoi, and present-day GMs Peter Svidler and (though now based in the Netherlands) Anish Giri.
Fedoseev was a FIDE master by the time he was 13. In 2010, while an IM, he finished tied for second with six other players at the Chigorin Memorial. His rating at the time remained below 2500 while every top-10 finisher was above 2600, a testament to Fedoseev’s level of play in the tournament as illustrated in the following game.
The next year, Fedoseev won Russia’s under-18 championship and finished second in the world under-18 championship. Given those successes, it is unsurprising that 2011 was also the year he became a GM.
Grandmaster
Fedoseev’s tie for second place in the Chigorin event was his second GM norm. His third came at the February 2011 Aeroflot Open despite an even +3 -3 =3 record, coming after he had reached a 2500 rating on the January 2011 list.
Also in 2011, Fedoseev took as a coach another Saint Petersburg chess star, GM Alexander Khalifman, FIDE’s 1999 world champion.
In 2013 Fedoseev’s last year as a youth player, he won the European under-18 championship. The next year in April, he joined the world’s top 100 with a rating of 2663.
A bronze medal at the 2014 European Championship earned him a spot in the 2015 World Cup, his first event in the qualifying cycle for the world championship. The 58th seed, he won his first-round matchup against GM Baskaran Adhiban before falling to GM Alexander Grischuk. Fedoseev didn’t make matters easy on the seventh-seeded Grischuk, however, drawing both standard time control games as well as both rapid games before falling in the blitz tiebreak.
Fedoseev’s best events of 2015, however, were a clear first at the Dvorkovich Memorial and a share of first at the Dubai Open. His successes continued into 2016 with a tie for first place at the Grenke Open, although he finished second on the tiebreaker. But the next year would be his breakout as a top player.
Greatest Year
The year 2017 has been Fedoseev’s most eventful one to date (as of May 2020): He achieved several top-three tournament finishes, joined the 2700 rating club in June, reached his peak career rating of 2733 in October, and made it to the quarterfinals of the Chess World Cup.
An undefeated first-place finish at the Aeroflot Open qualified him for Dortmund Sparkassen, where he tied GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave for second place. With the black pieces, Fedoseev finished ahead of GM Vladimir Kramnik by defeating the former world champion.
Fedoseev’s other tournament successes in 2017 include third place at the European Individual Championship, a second-place team finish at the World Team Championship, the aforementioned run in the World Cup, and a tie for the best score at the World Rapid Championship before dropping the tiebreak to GM Viswanathan Anand.
Recent Record
Since 2017 Fedoseev has remained comfortably in the top 100, although he has not since reached the same heights as that year. Nonetheless, while his standard rating has fallen below 2700, his rapid and blitz ratings remain comfortably above that mark.
In the 2019-20 world championship cycle, Fedoseev put together a respectable 6.5/11 at the Grand Swiss, 1.5 points shy of first, while making it to the second round of the World Cup. Also in 2019, Fedoseev was invited to the Tata Steel Masters tournament for the first time.
In 2021, Fedoseev reached the semifinals of the FIDE World Cup, his best performance in the event to date. In 2023, he played for the champion Gotham Knights of the Pro Chess League and won league MVP.
Fedoseev shouts out his team and especially board four WIM Alua Nurmanova for beating the women's world champion today!#ProChess pic.twitter.com/HVblLj2Msw
— ProChessLeague (@ProChessLeague) May 14, 2023
At age 28 as of February 2023, Fedoseev has accomplished more than most players achieve by their late 20s, and he is still young enough to make an even deeper mark on chess as his career continues.
