Peter Svidler (Пётр Свидлер; Pyotr Svidler, born June 17, 1976, in Leningrad) is a Russian chess grandmaster. On the January 2008 FIDE rating list he has an ELO rating of 2763, making him the number five in the world.
Peter Svidler learned to play chess when he was six years old. He became Grandmaster in 1994.
He is four-time Russian champion (1994, 1995, 1997, 2003). In 2001, he reached the semi-finals of the FIDE World Championship. Andrei Lukin is his coach.
Svidler is a noted exponent of Fischer Random Chess (also called Chess960). He won the first edition of the Chess960 Open held in Mainz, Germany. At the 2003 Mainz Chess Classic, he became Chess960 World Champion by beating Péter Lékó in an eight-game match. He successfully defended his title twice, defeating Levon Aronian in 2004 and Zoltán Almási in 2005, before losing it to Aronian in 2006.
He became shared second (together with Vishwanathan Anand) in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 in San Luis with 8.5 points out of 14 games, lagging 1.5 points behind the winner, Veselin Topalov. In an interview blank">http://chesslodge.blogspot.com/2006/01/exclusive-interview-gm-peter-svidler.html given for _World Chess Network he said: "I only prepared seriously for San Luis, and I think it has paid off. But in general I spend most of my spare time with my wife and kids, so my relative success in 2005 was a pleasant surprise."
His San Luis result earned him direct entry to the World Chess Championship 2007. In that tournament he scored 6.5 out of 14, placing 5th out of eight players.
In 2006 he went second behind Alexander Grischuk at the World Blitz Championship in Rishon Lezion, Israel, with 10.5 points out of 15 games. He also finished tied for first with Vladimir Kramnik at the Dortmund 2006.
Svidler is a fan of cricket; his handle on the Internet Chess Club server is Tendulkar. He is also a fan of Bob Dylan.
