Manuel León Hoyos (born February 10, 1989) is a Mexican
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
Grandmaster. He is the first Mexican chess player to break 2600 Elo in the official
FIDE
The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...
rating list with 2603 in October 2012.
Chess career
León Hoyos achieved the
Grandmaster title at the age of 18. He has been Mexican champion and has won numerous international tournaments including the 2012
U.S. Open.
León Hoyos has represented Mexico in three
Olympiads
An olympiad ( el, Ὀλυμπιάς, ''Olympiás'') is a period of four years, particularly those associated with the ancient and modern Olympic Games.
Although the ancient Olympics were established during Greece's Archaic Era, it was not unti ...
: Russia (2010), Turkey (2012), and Norway (2014). And at the
World Mind Sports Games
The World Mind Sports Games (WMSG) was a multi-sport event created by the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) as a "stepping stone on the path of introducing a third kind of Olympic Games" after the Summer and the Winter Olympics".
The i ...
in China (2008).
He took part in the
Chess World Cup 2011
The Chess World Cup 2011 was a chess World Cup tournament. It was a 128-player single-elimination tournament, played between 26 August and 21 September 2011, in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. The Cup winner Peter Svidler, along with second placed Alexan ...
in Russia and was eliminated by Grandmaster
Alexei Shirov
Alexei Shirov (, lv, Aleksejs Širovs; born 4 July 1972) is a Latvian and Spanish chess player. Shirov was ranked number two in the world in 1994.
He won a match against Vladimir Kramnik in 1998 to qualify to play as challenger for the classic ...
. León Hoyos placed 5th in the 2012 Ibero-American Championship in Ecuador, 7th in the 2007 American Continental Championship in Colombia and 5th in the 2008 Pan-American Championship in the United States. He also placed 7th in the under-18 World Championship in 2007 held in Turkey.
León Hoyos tied for 1st place in the 2010 Arctic Chess Challenge in Norway with Grandmaster
Mikhail Kobalia
Mikhail Robertovich Kobalia (; born May 3, 1978) is a Russian chess Grandmaster (1997).
Together with 43 other Russian elite chess players, Kobalia signed an open letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin, protesting against the 2022 Russian in ...
. He tied for 1st place at the 2013 Las Vegas Chess Festival together with Grandmaster
Wesley So
Wesley Barbossa So (born October 9, 1993) is a Filipino and American chess grandmaster and 3-time U.S. Chess Champion (in 2017, 2020, and 2021). He is also a three-time Philippine Chess Champion. On the March 2017 FIDE rating list, he was ran ...
. León Hoyos won the 2012 Mexican Open. He placed 3th place in the 2012 UNAM Chess Festival, a rapid and blindfold invitational tournament won by World's No. 1
Magnus Carlsen
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the reigning five-time World Chess Champion. He is also a three-time World Rapid Chess Champion and five-time World Blitz Chess Champion. Carlsen has h ...
.
León Hoyos has worked with Grandmaster
Vassily Ivanchuk
Vasyl Mykhaylovych Ivanchuk ( uk, Василь Михайлович Іванчук; born March 18, 1969), also transliterated as Vassily Ivanchuk, is a Ukrainian chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 1988. A leading ...
, former World's No. 2, World Blitz Championship in 2007 and World Rapid Championship in 2016. He has served him as a second in several tournaments.
Notable games
Manuel Leon Hoyos vs Baadur Jobava, 2010, 1-0Ivan Cheparinov vs Manuel Leon Hoyos, 2006, 0-1Judit Polgar vs Manuel Leon Hoyos, 2012, 1/2-1/2Manuel Leon Hoyos vs Alexei Shirov, 2011, 1/2-1/2Manuel Leon Hoyos vs Lazaro Bruzon Batista, 2007, 1-0
Education
In 2012, he received a scholarship to attend Webster University
Webster University is a private university with its main campus in Webster Groves, Missouri. It has multiple branch locations across the United States and countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs ...
in St. Louis, Missouri and became part of the Webster University chess team, coached by former Women's World Champion and Grandmaster Susan Polgar
Susan is a feminine given name, from Persian "Susan" (lily flower), from Egyptian '' sšn'' and Coptic ''shoshen'' meaning "lotus flower", from Hebrew ''Shoshana'' meaning "lily" (in modern Hebrew this also means "rose" and a flower in general), ...
. Between 2012 and 2017, Webster University was the ranked No. 1 chess team in the U.S. and 5-time collegiate national champion.
References
External links
Official website
*
Manuel Leon Hoyos
chess games at 365Chess.com
Mexican chess players
Chess Grandmasters
1989 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Mérida, Yucatán
Webster University alumni
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