Nigel Short

Nigel Short was born on June 1, 1965 in Leigh, Lancashire, England. A chess prodigy, Short qualified for the British Men's Chess Championship three days before his twelfth birthday. Participating in four World Junior Championships (1980-1983), he finished second to Kasparov in 1980. He earned the grandmaster title in 1984. Short won the British Chess Championship in 1984, 1987, and 1998 and the English Championship in 1991. One of Short's best tournament results came at the Amsterdam VSB tournament in 1991 when he tied for first place with Valery Salov ahead of both Kasparov and Karpov.

In 1993 he played Garry Kasparov for the Professional Chess Association World Chess Championship, losing 12.5 - 7.5. He had won matches against former world champion Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman on his way to meeting Kasparov.

In 2001, Short was in the news as the story broke that he'd been secretly playing the reclusive former chess champion Bobby Fischer online in speed chess matches. It was never confirmed that Short's opponent was in fact Bobby Fischer, and Fischer himself denied it.

In April 2003 he won the Hunguest Hotels Super Chess Tournament held in Budapest ahead of Boris Gelfand, Judit Polgr and P ter Lk among others (Polgar and Lk were in the world's top ten at the time). In 2004 he won the Commonwealth Chess Championship and the Gibraltar Chess Congress as well as a tournament in Taiyuan, China.

Short reached his peak ELO rating of 2712 in April 2004. In the April 2005 FIDE rating list, Short was ranked number 28 in the world with an Elo rating of 2673, making him England's number two behind Michael Adams.

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