Bu Xiangzhi

Bu Xiangzhi born December 10, 1985 in Qingdao, Shandong is a Chinese Grandmaster. He is winner of the World Cup in blind chess from Bilbao 2007

Career

Bu was first introduced to chess by a cousin (his grandfather was a strong xiangqi player), and his interest grew with his compatriot Xie Jun’s women’s world championship victory. He learned the chess at the age of six years and received early training. His first chess book was a translation of Bobby Fischer’s famous book My 60 Memorable Games – a player he admires. In 1993, he won the Qingdao Junior Chess Championship.

In 1997 this talent became the Children's Champion of the National S.T. Lee Cup. In 1998 at the age of 12, he captured the titles of National Pupil Champion and Under-14 World Youth Champion. In 1999 he finished seventh in the prestigious Tan Chin Nam Grandmaster Invitational Tournament.

A sponsor's contract with a mineral water producer of his home city Qingdao enabled to him in 1999 with his coach Ji Yunqi to travel to Europe to take part there in several international tournaments. In autumn 1999 he achieved within only two months three Grandmaster norms, with tournament wins in Paks and Budapest, and coming joint first in Qingdao. Also in 1999 he won the German Open. He became a Grandmaster in September 1999 at the age of 13 years, 10 months, 13 days, at the time the youngest person to hold the title. He gave up the running status of the world's youngest Grandmaster to Sergey Karjakin in July 2002.

In 2000 in Germany he won in his first appearance the International Neckar Open in Deizisau, Stuttgart. Also in 2000, Bu defeated the Azerbaijani chess talent Teimour Radjabov 6.5-1.5 in an eight game Future World Champions Match competition in New York

Bu has played regularly since 2001 in the Chinese national team. With the World Team Championship in 2005 in Beersheba and with the Chess Olympiad in 2006 in Turin he achieved on the top board very good results and won silver in each case. He played first board in the 2006 Chess Olympiad, where the Chinese team finished in second place. He won four games and drew eight, including his games against top Grandmasters Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand and Levon Aronian.

In July 2007, Bu won the Canadian Open Championship in Ottawa, Canada.In October 2007, he won the Blindfold Chess World Cup in Bilbao, defeating strong Grandmasters Veselin Topalov, Magnus Carlsen, Pentala Harikrishna, Judith Polgar and Sergey Karjakin in the process.