Person of day - 25 JUNE 2022
ANTON KOROBOV
Anton Korobov was born in 1985 in Kemerovo, but his family soon moved to Kharkiv, in Ukraine. Anton began to play chess at the Pawn Chess Club, where he was taught firstly by Yuri and Lidia Sahanovichs and later by master Alexander Vaisman.
Soon after, Korobov won the Ukrainian championship and the world junior championship. In 2001, the grandmaster won his country’s junior championship and became an international master, before winning the men’s Ukrainian championship a year later.
After a while, Anton won the secondary tournament in Linares and became a grandmaster. At that time, with a rating of just under 2600, the Ukrainian chess player was one of the world’s most promising youngsters. In a final of another Ukrainian championship, he came second, losing only to Andrei Volokitin in the main match.
Success was followed by failure and Korobov temporarily distanced himself from chess. The grandmaster graduated from the faculty of foreign languages in Karamzin University and he earned a salary by translating books in Kharkiv’s publishing houses.
His return came in 2008. Korobov split 2ndplace in Pardubice, before winning the prestigious match a year later with 8 points out of 9. As a member of the A Dan Dzo-PGMB team, he firstly came second and then won twice at Ukrainian team championships. In2010, hewonbronzeattheEuropean Cup.
Victories in Beirut and Abu Dhabi, two first places at Aeroflot Opens, another victory in the individual Ukrainian championship and victory at the European blitz championship proved that the Ukrainian grandmaster was on an upwards curve. His rating surpassed 2700 and in 2013, Anton Korbov was the star of the World Cup. He consecutively beat Baadur Jobava, Daniil Dubov and Hikaru Nakamura- he was only stopped in the quarter-final by Vladimir Kramnik, who would go on to win the tournament.
On this wave of success, Anton finally made it into the Ukrainian national team. He won bronze at the 2014 world championship, where he came first at the second board. In 2015, Korobov won the Russian team championship with a new super-club, Siberia.
In 2016, Anton Korobov won a classical tournament in Poikovsky and a rapid chess tournament in Corsica, as well as winning silver medals at the Olympiad with Ukraine. In 2017, he won another Russian championship with Siberia-Sirius.
He is a prize-winner of the Ukrainian championship in correspondence chess and he trained Anna Ushenina in her victorious the world championship and her match against Hou Yifan.
Anton Korobov: “Anna’s performance is a difficult subject. Her creativity impressed me much more than her result in sport. Take her match against Nadezhda Kosintseva. Any great chess player would have signed up for that match in a heartbeat!”
In 2019, Anton won a strong open tournament in Sitges and became the winner of the first part of the Superbet super tournament, having left behind many elite grandmasters.
