Peter Svidler
Country: Russia
Date of birth: June 17, 1976

Rating July 1, 2009: 2739

Although he is only 33 years old, Peter Svidler has more than enough experience to lead the Experience team. The grandmaster from St. Petersburg first caught the attention of the international chess press when in 1994 at the age of 18 he won the Russian Championship in Elista. That was sensational news, but he impressed even more when in 1995 and 1997 he repeated this feat. On the international scene Svidler had his breakthrough in Tilburg in 1997, where he shared first place with Kramnik and Kasparov and defeated the latter in their direct encounter. After these first successes he suffered a setback from which he only fully recovered in 2003. For the fourth time he became Russian champion and with the Russian team he won the European Championship in Plovdiv. Ever since that comeback Svidler has been a member of the world top, as witness his shared second place, with Anand behind Topalov, at the 2005 World Championshipin San Luis, and his fifth place at the 2007 World Championship in Mexico City. For many years his rating has been hovering above 2700, but still his results may be called unpredictable. At the start of 2006 he had his highest rating ever. In the following year he shed dozens of those 2765 points, but in 2008 he was back at 2763 again. Next another lesser period followed but following several good results he has returned to 2739 and twelfth place in the world rankings on the latest FIDE list. In Moscow, at the end of 2008, Svidler won the Russian Championship for the fifth time and in January of this year he won the GibTelecom tournament in Gibraltar with the fine score of 8 out of 10. And there was more. In Ireland he won the Bunratty tournament for the second time, in Germany he contributed heavily with 7 out of 9 to the championship of Baden-Baden and in France he did the same with 6 out of 8 for new champions Evry Grand Roque. Svidler regrets that at the NH tournament he cannot directly qualify for the Amber tournament in which he played between 2004 and 2007, but he will be highly motivated to show that he belongs in Nice next year.

Peter Heine Nielsen
Country: Denmark
Date of birth:  May 24, 1973

Rating July 1, 2009: 2680

Although he’s probably playing less than ever, Peter Heine Nielsen currently holds the highest rating in his career with 2680 points. One explanation for his high rating is the fact that in the games he plays he is more focused and efficient than ever. Another reason is the fact that his playing strength has profited enormously from his collaboration with World Champion Vishy Anand and Anand’s envisaged successor Magnus Carlsen. In 2006 Nielsen was present at the first NH Tournament as the second of Carlsen, who on that occasion qualified for the Amber tournament. They still work together, but these days Nielsen mainly trains with Anand. In the past years the tall Dane helped him at numerous events, such as the 2007 World Championship that the Indian won in Mexico City and the 2008 World Championship Match he won against Kramnik in Bonn. But, as said, when Nielsen sits down at the board himself he tends to be efficient. Last summer he shared first place at the Politiken Cup with 8 out of 10 and at the Olympiad in Dresden he collected 7 points from 10 games at the first board of the Danish team. He also proved highly reliable in the club team competitions he took part in. In the Swedish league he scored 3 from 3, in the Danish league 7 from 8, and in Germany he made an important contribution, 7 from 9, to the championship of Baden-Baden, where he was a team mate of Anand and Svidler. Nielsen was already in his late twenties when he made his international breakthrough. The first leading player he worked with was Bent Larsen, the Danish legend who had a great influence on him and in whose footsteps he followed. Until the rise of Carlsen, Nielsen was the strongest grandmaster in Scandinavia and it was in these countries that he had his first successes, taking first place in the 2001 North Sea Cup, the 2004 Sigeman tournament and the 2005 Drammen tournament. But he also won the Hastings Premier in 2002/03 and the European Internet Championship in 2005.

Alexander Beliavsky
Country: Slovenia
Date of birth: December 17, 1953

Rating July 1, 2009: 2662
                         
Alexander Beliavsky is the highest ranked player over fifty years old in the world rankings and one of only two players in this age category in the Top 100. The Slovenian grandmaster is ranked 68th, 30 places higher than Anatoly Karpov. Although of late ‘Big Al’, as he is often called, spends some of his time training talented youngsters, he remains active as a player and keeps searching for new ideas.  In the past six months he demonstrated that he has no wish at all to rest on his laurels. Besides a number of tournaments he played in three club team competitions. The points that he collected in Hungary (5,5 from 7), Germany (6 from 10) and Ukraine (5,5 from 6) resulted in a 2662 rating, his highest since 2004. These days Beliavsky represents Slovenia, but he was born in Lvov in Ukraine when this country was still part of the Soviet Union. Beliavsky’s first international success was his victory in the Junior World Championship in 1973. This win marked the beginning of an impressive career filled with numerous highlights. Only one year later he became (together with Tal) champion of the Soviet Union. This championship of the greatest chess power in the world he would win three more times. Of course he represented the Soviet Union in many Olympiads and other team events and in doing so assembled a rich collection of medals. His best achievement in the world championship cycle was reaching the Quarter Finals of the Candidates’ matches in 1983, where he was eliminated by Kasparov. Beliavsky is an enterprising, dynamical chess player who is an asset for any tournament he plays in. And he’s won quite a few of them. Here’s a small selection: Wijk aan Zee 1984 (together with Kortchnoi), Tilburg 1981 and 1986, Amsterdam 1989 and 1990, Belgrade 1993 and Portoroz 2001 and 2005. In the first NH Tournament in 2006 Beliavsky was the most successful player on the Experience team. His imposing tournament performance of 2774 was even the highest of all participants.

Loek van Wely
Country: The Netherlands
Date of birth: October 7, 1972

Rating July 1, 2009: 2655
                        

Ljubomir Ljubojevic
Country: Serbia
Date of birth: November 2, 1950

Rating July 1, 2009: 2553
                   
The last classical tournament that Ljubomir Ljubojevic played before this 2009 NH Tournament was the NH Tournament last summer. To warm up for this edition he played in the Villarobledo rapid tournament last month. For the rest the Serbian grandmaster plays very little these days. An exception was the ‘Honorary Group’ at the 70th Corus tournament last year, which he won with a score of 4 out of 6, ahead of Kortchnoi, Timman and Portisch. And fortunately he keeps making an exception for the NH Tournament, where he had the third best result on the Experience team last year. For several decades ‘Ljubo’ was the most successful player of Yugoslavia, one of the strongest and most popular chess countries in the world. His comet-like rise started after he had finished second in the 1970 European Junior Championship and was invited to play in a grandmaster tournament in Sarajevo. Ljubojevic won that tournament and already the next year he earned the grandmaster title. In the years that followed he kept winning tournaments and in the 1983 world rankings he was in third place behind Karpov and Kasparov. It is hard to say which were his best tournament achievements, but there can be no denying that his shared first places (and the fascinating neck-and-neck races) with Kasparov in Brussels in 1987 and in Barcelona in 1989 are among them. In an interview Ljubojevic himself also mentioned his victory in Linares in 1985, his 11 out of 14 super-score on first board at the 1982 Olympiad in Lucerne, and several tournaments that he won way ahead of the rest, such as Las Palmas in 1974 and ’75 and Manila in 1975. But in that case we haven’t even mentioned the following first places: Wijk aan Zee 1976, Buenos Aires 1980 and ’81, Belgrade 1987 and Reggio Emilia 1991. And, of course, his overall victory at the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament in Monaco in 1993. Thanks to his aggressive and imaginative style Ljubojevic won over many fans and his often unusual opening ideas inspired countless followers. Whoever wants to get a taste of his style should play through his masterpiece against Andersson from Wijk aan Zee 1976, a spectacular fight which at the time was described as ‘the best game of the past twenty years’.

Hikaru Nakamura
Country: United States
Date of birth: December 9, 1987

Rating July 1, 2009: 2710

Hikaru Nakamura is the current American champion and the big hope of American chess. Earlier this year he convincingly won the U.S. Championship in Saint Louis, where all his main rivals took part. It was the second time he won the national championship, the first time was in 2004 in San Diego when he was only 16 years old. Nakamura learned to play chess when he was seven years old and soon he was having his first successes. At the age of ten years and 79 days he became the youngest American International Master in history. Exactly five years later he broke the legendary record of Bobby Fischer when at the age of 15 years and 79 days he became the youngest American International Grandmaster of all time. Nakamura’s play is characterized by deep concentration, great determination and an enormous will to win. Playing for the American team he won a bronze medal at the 2006 Olympiad in Turin and one year later he finished in shared first place in Gibraltar and won the Magistral d’Escacs in Barcelona. This year he was unstoppable in the French league, where he scored 7,5 points from 8 games with a performance rating of 3028. Nakamura is rightly feared for his fast play, as witness his achievements in rapid tournaments. In 2007 he won the famous rapid tournament in Corsica and in 2008 he came out on top in the traditional rapid spectacle in Cap d’Agde, where he knocked out Anatoly Karpov in the semi-finals and defeated Vasily Ivanchuk in the final. He is even more feared when the speed goes up some more notches. Nakamura is one of the best speed chess players in the world and in the fastest form, bullet (games with one minute for all the moves) he is in a class of his own. As a result he is highly popular at the Internet Chess Club, where he plays under the handle Smallville, and on Playchess, where he is known as Star Wars. But of late he’s been very serious about his classical chess. He’s been working hard and has been successful. Last month he posted an excellent tournament victory in San Sebastian.

Fabiano Caruana
Country: Italy
Date of birth: July 30, 1992

Rating July 1, 2009: 2670
                                 
Fabiano Caruana likes to play in the Netherlands and it is easy to understand why that is. It all started in the summer of 2007, when at the age of fifteen he won the Hogeschool Zeeland Tournament in Vlissingen with superior ease, ahead of experienced grandmasters such as Kasimdzhanov and Tiviakov. Next he was unstoppable in the C-Group in Wijk aan Zee. Playing uncompromising chess he finished two points ahead of Dimitri Reinderman and Parimarjan Negi (+9,-2,=2!). Following this success he was invited for this year’s B-Group, where thanks to a last-round win against Nigel Short he again took first prize. Caruana is one of the greatest super-talents of the moment. With giant leaps he climbs the world rankings, with an average annual Elo gain of some one hundred points. On the January 1 list of 2006, 13-year-old Caruana ‘only’ had a rating of 2409. One year on his rating had gone up to 2492 and one further year on it had become 2598. In the meantime he has ascended to 2670. Caruana was born in Miami, in the United States, where he broke several records. In September 2002, when he was ten, he defeated his first grandmaster in an official tournament and last year, on July 15, he became the youngest grandmaster in American history at the age of fourteen years and 350 days. In both cases he broke the old record of Hikaru Nakamura. But besides an American passport, Caruana also holds an Italian passport and so at the end of 2006 he played in the Italian championship for the first time. He finished in a tie for first place but lost the play-off against Godena. In December 2007 he knew no mercy. In Martina Franca he became Italian champion with a score of 9½ out of 11, three points clear of the closest pursuers. In 2008 he defended his title with a score of 8 from 11. In 2007 he and his parents took a couple of important decisions. He chose to represent Italy in international competitions and they moved to Budapest to be closer to the European circuit and to train with grandmaster Alexander Chernin. Last year he scored 6,5 from 10 in the NH Tournament, with a performance rating of 2706. A fine result, but this time he will be aiming for more.

Jan Smeets
Country: The Netherlands
Date of birth: April 5, 1985

Rating July 1, 2009: 2632
                       
As this year’s Dutch championship has not been held yet, Jan Smeets is still the reigning Dutch champion. He won the title last year in Hilversum in a tournament that was special for him for more than one reason. Not only did he win his first national title, he also played Erwin l’Ami, who, to the day, is exactly as old as he is, on their birthday. Of course, that game ended in a draw. As Dutch champion Smeets was invited to the top group of the 2009 Corus tournament. In Wijk aan Zee he made his debut at the highest level and did so quite well. In the end he shared eighth place with Loek van Wely and Wang Yue, the Chinese sensation who swept the field in Krasnapolsky last year with a baffling 8,5 from 10. Smeets could have finished higher if he had not accepted a draw at the end of his game against Radjabov, when he could have claimed according to the rules. Nevertheless he looked back on a successful performance. As he put it himself in Schaakmagazine: ‘I didn’t have the feeling they were coming from another planet.’ As a junior player Jan Smeets collected Dutch national titles by the dozen and also in European and World Junior Championships he left his mark in various age categories. And so it was only a matter of fulfilling a promise when in 2004, in Wijk aan Zee, he became a grandmaster (at that moment the youngest in Dutch history). Smeets has always worked diligently on his chess and has developed into a tactically skilled player who can be dangerous for anybody. Certainly if he manages to avoid time-trouble, a weakness that regularly plays tricks on him and accounts for his unpredictable results. In the first NH Chess Tournament in 2006, for instance, he only made two draws. Four times he won and four times he had to admit defeat. After the Corus tournament he played little this year, as his economic studies take up a lot of time. But he did make an important contribution to the Dutch championship of his club HSG with an excellent score of 7,5 from 9 and a performance rating of 2670.

Daniel Stellwagen
Country: The Netherlands
Date of birth: March 1, 1987

Rating July 1, 2009: 2630
                   
Daniel Stellwagen is playing on the Rising Stars team for the fourth time. During his first three appearances in Krasnapolsky he alternated strong and weak moments and failed to play a role in the fight for the ticket for the Amber tournament. He’ll be highly motivated to do better this time. In any case he gained encouraging experience at the Corus tournament Zee earlier this year, where for the first time he was invited to play in the top group. In Wijk aan Zee he made a reasonable debut. Stellwagen played a number of excellent games and although in the end he finished in last place, he could point out that he shared this place with aces such as Adams, Ivanchuk and Morozevich. Stellwagen is seen by many as Holland’s biggest talent since Loek van Wely. This is easy to understand as he created great expectations at an early age. He was only eleven years old when at the VAM-tournament in Hoogeveen he defeated his first grandmaster and when he was fifteen he became Holland’s youngest International Master ever. In 2004 he also earned the grandmaster title after he’d come shared second behind Krishnan Sasikiran at the Hogeschool Zeeland Toernooi in Vlissingen. As a junior player Stellwagen had excellent results in national and international contests, although he no longer took part in such events in Holland after he’d won the U-20 championship at the age of 15.  In the past years he was always counted among the favourites at the Dutch championship. A couple of times he came close to the coveted title. In 2005 and 2008 he claimed second place. In 2007 he finished shared first with a score of 8 from 11, but lost the tie-breaker for the title to Tiviakov. Last autumn he scored 6 from 9 for the Dutch team at the Olympiad in Dresden. Another good result was his second place in last year’s Sigeman tournament in Malmö, behind Hillarp-Persson, but ahead of Lars Bo Hansen, Ralf Akesson and Jan Timman. Of late he has not played much, as his chemistry studies at Utrecht university absorbed a lot of time. In the German Bundesliga he collected 7,5 points from 13 games against strong opposition, while in the Dutch league he contributed his share to the championship of HSG (5 out of 7).

Hou Yifan
Country: China
Date of birth: February 27, 1994

Rating July 1, 2009: 2584
                                      
Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan is seen by many experts as the successor to Judit Polgar. Whether these expectations are justified we will learn in the years ahead, but in any case Hou Yifan has already broken several records of her Hungarian example. In fact an overview of the results of the 15-year-old Chinese youngster reads like one long list of records. When she was three she was taught to play chess by her father, whom she defeated within a couple of weeks. Two years later he found her a real trainer, a member of the Chinese national team. When she was 9, Hou Yifan won the U-10 Girls World Championship and as a result she was selected as the youngest member ever of the Chinese team. Next she finished third in the Boys U-10 World Championship and one year later she ended fifth in the Boys U-12. At the age of twelve she made her debut on the Chinese women’s team scoring an amazing 11 out of 13 at the Olympiad in Turin. Another year later she became the youngest Chinese women’s champion ever in Chongqing with a score of 9 points from 11 games. In 2008 she focused all her efforts on attaining the (male) grandmaster title and this wish was also fulfilled. Her first grandmaster norm she booked at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, the second at the World Juniors (highest category), where she was the only girl to participate and where she finished in second place. The third norm she secured at the Women’s World Championship in Nalchik, where she finished second behind Alexandra Kosteniuk. Thanks to these results, at the age of 14 years, 6 months and 2 days, she became the youngest girl ever to obtain the International Grandmaster title. And she was the first girl ever to skip the International Master title in the process. Hou Yifan hails from the province of Jiangsu, which has produced many famous Chinese sportsmen and women, such as basketball star Yao Ming and Olympic hurdles champion Liu Xiang. In 2003 she moved to Beijing to have better training facilities. In this year’s B-Group of the Corus tournament she had a performance rating of 2620, but her actual rating has been hovering about the same level for about a year now. Will she make another remarkable step forward at the NH Chess Tournament?