Rustam Kasimdzhanov stares at Michael Adams as they begin to play their championship match Rustam Kasimdzhanov (born December 5, 1979) is a chess grandmaster from Uzbekistan, and the current FIDE world champion. In the Uzbek language, which officially uses Latin script since 1992, his name is written "Qosimjonov".
His best results include first in the 1998 Asian Championship, second in the World Junior Chess Championship in 1999, first at Essen, 2001, first at Pamplona, 2002 (winning a blitz playoff against Viktor Bologan after both had finished the main tournament on 3.5/6), first with 8/9 at the Vlissingen Open, 2003, a bronze-medal winning 9.5/12 performance on board one for his country at the 2000 Chess Olympiad and runner-up in the FIDE World Cup in 2002 (losing to Viswanathan Anand in the final). He has played in the prestigious Wijk aan Zee tournament twice, but did not perform well either time: in 1999 he finished 11th of 14 with 5/13, in 2002 he finished 13th of 14 with 4.5/13.
In the FIDE World Chess Championship, 2004, Kasimdzhanov unexpectedly made his way through to the final, winning mini-matches against Alejandro Ramirez, Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, Vasily Ivanchuk, Zoltan Almasi, Alexander Grischuk and Veselin Topalov to meet Michael Adams to play for the title and the right to face world number one Garry Kasparov in a match.
In the final six-game match of the Championship, both players won two games, making a tie-break of rapid games necessary. Kasimdzhanov won the first game with black, after having been in a difficult position. By drawing the second game he became the new world champion.
In the January 2005 FIDE list, Kasimdzhanov had an Elo rating of 2678, making him number 25 in the world and Uzbekistan's number one. He has been rated as high as 2706 (in the October 2001 list).
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