page_title: Boris Gelfand
section_title: Rising star
hierarchical_section_title: Boris Gelfand / Rising star
caption_attribution_description: B. Gelfand at Corus tournament, January 2006. Own photo.
context_page_description: Boris Gelfand is a Soviet-born Israeli chess player. He was awarded the title Grandmaster by FIDE in 1989.
  A six-time World Championship candidate, he won the Chess World Cup 2009 and the 2011 Candidates Tournament, making him challenger for the World Chess Championship 2012. Although the match with defending champion Viswanathan Anand finished level at 6–6, Gelfand lost the deciding rapidplay tiebreak by 2½–1½.
  Gelfand has won major tournaments at Wijk aan Zee, Tilburg, Moscow, Linares and Dos Hermanas. He has competed in eleven Chess Olympiads and held a place within the top 30 players ranked by FIDE from January 1990 to October 2017.
context_section_description: In Gelfand's first appearance at the USSR Championship held in Odessa in 1989, he shared second place with Alexander Beliavsky, Dolmatov and Vereslav Eingorn, earning a prize for "greatest amount of material sacrificed in the course of a tournament". Soon after, he won the Palma de Mallorca Open with 7½/9.
  He received invitations to major tournaments in 1990, placing second behind Garry Kasparov with 7½/11 in Linares and Dortmund, sharing first with Vassily Ivanchuk in the Manila Interzonal and third at Tilburg. At the Candidates Matches in early 1991, Gelfand defeated Predrag Nikolic 5½-4½ but was beaten in the next round by Nigel Short 3-5. Despite the disappointment, Gelfand claimed first place at Belgrade with 7½/11 and shared second place with Kasparov at Reggio Emilia, half a point behind Viswanathan Anand. He shared first place with Valery Salov at Wijk aan Zee in 1992, shared second place at Munich, lost in the final of Tilburg knockout to Michael Adams and shared first with Anand at the Alekhine Memorial held in Moscow.
  A solid second place at Munich in 1993 preceded his biggest tournament win to this point, winning the Biel Interzonal with a score of 9/13, earning a spot in the 1994 Candidates Matches. Gelfand went on to defeat Adams 5-3 in the quarter finals and Vladimir Kramnik 4½-3½ in the semi-finals, before losing to Anatoly Karpov in the Candidates Final 6-3 in 1995.
  Gelfand remained ever-present in the world's top 20 players, winning the 1994 editions of Dos Hermanas and Cap d'Agde, Belgrade in 1995, shared first at Tilburg and Vienna in 1996, finished third at Dortmund and shared second place at Groningen. He came third in a strong Biel tournament and second at the Rubinstein Memorial held in Polanica Zdroj. Gelfand's best result at the FIDE Knockout World Championships came in 1997, defeating Joël Lautier (4-2), Vladislav Tkachiev (3½-2½) and Dreev (2.5-1.5) before being knocked out in the semi-finals by eventual tournament winner Anand (1½-½).
  In 1998, Gelfand won the Rubinstein Memorial, lost the Cap d'Agde knockout tournament final against Karpov after running out of time in the decisive tiebreak blitz game while having a winning position, won the 1999 edition of Sigeman & Co held in Malmö and the Rubinstein Memorial in 2000. In 2001, Gelfand shared first place in the rapid section of the Melody Amber tournament (taking first place outright the next year) and came third in Astana. The next year, he shared first at the NAO Masters in Cannes, won the Cap d'Agde KO and took part in the "Russia vs World" rapid match, scoring 6/10 for the winning World team. He played in Dortmund, which was the Candidate Tournament for the Classical World Chess Championship 2004, but only managed to finish in third place in the preliminary group, so didn't progress to the knockout stages.
  In 2003, he shared third place at Enghien and in 2004 won at Pamplona. Gelfand shared first in the Bermuda Invitational and Biel in 2005. He also finished in sixth place at the Chess World Cup 2005, earning a place in the 2007 Candidates Matches. In 2006, Gelfand shared fifth place with Sergey Karjakin scoring 7/13 at Corus and shared third place at Dortmund.
  Gelfand won his Candidates matches against Rustam Kasimdzhanov 5½-3½ and Gata Kamsky 3½-1½, to qualify for the Championship tournament, held in Mexico City. Despite being ranked seventh in the World Chess Championship 2007 by FIDE rating, Gelfand caused an upset in finishing joint second (third on tiebreak) with Vladimir Kramnik, a point behind Viswanathan Anand. He also drew a match with David Navara 2-2, reached the semi finals of the ACP Rapid Cup in Odessa, shared first place with Shirov, Ivan Sokolov and Fridman at the Calatrava rapid and shared third place at the Tal Memorial. He competed for Israel at the 2009 Maccabiah Games in Israel.
caption: Corus Chess 2006
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Fotoschau", "Image Rating": "0", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[720, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "E", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[720, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "72", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "268", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5483"}