Ruslan Ponomariov
Ruslan Olehovych Ponomariov (; born 11 October 1983) is a Ukrainian chess grandmaster. He was FIDE World Chess Champion from 2002 to 2004. He won the Ukrainian Chess Championship in 2011. He was runner-up in the Chess World Cup 2005 and Chess World Cup 2009, while reaching the semi-finals in 2011 and the quarterfinals in 2007. Early career Ponomariov was born in Horlivka in Ukraine. He was taught to play chess by his father at the age of 5. At 9 he became a first category player, and in September 1993 he moved to Kramatorsk. Here Ponomariov attended the A. V. Momot Chess School and was trained by Boris Ponomariov. In 1994 he placed third in the World Under-12 Championship at the age of ten. In 1996 he won the European Under-18 Championship at the age of just twelve, and the following year won the World Under-18 Championship. In 1998, at the age of fourteen, he was awarded the Grandmaster title, making him the youngest ever player at that time to hold the title. In 1999, he was a member of the Ukrainian national youth team, which won the U-16 Chess Olympiad in Artek, Ukraine. Among Ponomariov's notable later results