Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Biography

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, born 21 October 1990, earned the grandmaster title in 2005 at 14 years and 4 months old. He won the World Junior Chess Championship in 2009 and took the French Chess Championship in 2007, 2011 and 2012, establishing himself as France's top-ranked player for most of the following two decades.

He became a fixture of the elite Biel Grandmaster Tournament, winning it five times — 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 — and reached a career-high FIDE rating of 2819 in August 2016, the seventh-highest rating in history at the time. He went on to win the Sinquefield Cup in both 2017 and 2021, becoming the first player to take that title outright twice, and finished runner-up in the 2020–21 Candidates Tournament on 8/14, half a point behind winner Ian Nepomniachtchi.

In blitz chess he won the World Blitz Championship in Warsaw in 2021, defeating Jan-Krzysztof Duda 2–1 in a tiebreak playoff after finishing level on 15/21 — his first world title after taking silver in 2015. For the French national team he has played five Chess Olympiads between 2006 and 2014, most often on top board, and represented France at the 2007 European Team Championship in Heraklion.

Key achievements

• World Junior Champion, 2009
• Sinquefield Cup champion: 2017 and 2021
• World Blitz Champion, 2021 (Warsaw, 15/21, def. Duda 2–1 tiebreak)
• Candidates Tournament runner-up, 2020–21 (8/14)
• Five-time Biel Grandmaster Tournament champion: 2009, 2013–2016

Ratings

Titles

Classical Tournaments

Team Events

Source: OlimpBase (olimpbase.org) individual Olympiad records, cross-checked with Wikipedia. No team medals recorded for France in these editions.

Read more on Wikipedia or view his FIDE profile.