Alexei Shirov

Alexei Shirov, born in Riga in 1972,
is a Latvian-Spanish chess grandmaster and former world number two.
As a junior, he won the World Under-16 Championship in 1988 and earned the grandmaster title in 1990.
Shirov rapidly rose to the world elite in the early 1990s and reached number two in the world rankings in January 1994 with a rating of 2740.
One of his greatest achievements came in 1998, when he defeated Vladimir Kramnik in a qualifying match
and earned the right to challenge Garry Kasparov for the World Championship.
However, the planned match never took place due to a lack of financial backing.
Shirov reached the final of both the 2000 FIDE World Championship and the 2007 Chess World Cup.
He achieved his peak rating of 2755 in January 2008.
Renowned for his uncompromising attacking play, spectacular sacrifices and original ideas,
his style is often compared to that of fellow Riga-born World Champion Mikhail Tal.
Shirov has published several books, including Fire on Board, and produced a number of training courses for ChessBase up to 2012.