Levon Grigori Aronian is an Armenian Grandmaster, former 2830 and current world number 9, who turns 40 as of today!

Born in 1982, Levon's first notable achievement came in the 1994 U12 Youth Championship which he won ahead of future GMs like Alexander Grischuk and Etienne Bacrot.

Young Lev continued to show his potential by becoming a Grandmaster in 2000 (Couldn't find the events where he got norms, so if someone knows, feel free to comment.) and becoming the World Junior Champion in 2002 ahead GMs Luke McShane and Surya Shekhar Ganguly who came 2nd and 3rd respectively. Other notables in this field include Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Bu Xiangzhi and Pentala Harikrishna.

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Levon(22), Magnus(14) and Hikaru(17) at the 2004 Fide World Chess Championship

He first entered the top 100 in the 2003, being rated #85 with a rating of 2610. Note that at the time there were only 14 players who were rated 2700 . Just two years later in 2005, Levon entered the top 10 with a rating of 2724 and has pretty much stayed there ever since. Levon has been a regular in the World Championship cycle for well over a decade, taking part in the 2004 Fide World Championship Tournament, the 2007 World Championship Tournament, as well as qualifying for all 5 candidates from 2011-2018 (2011, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018).

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Some of his notable super-tournament wins include Linares 2006, Sochi Grand Prix Tournament 2008, Bilbao 2009 & 2013, Wijk aan Zee 2012 & 2014, Alekhine Memorial 2013, Sinquefield Cup 2015. Grenke Chess Classic 2017, Norway Chess 2017 as well as being the only player to have won the World Cup twice (2005 and 2017.)

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Levon won the 2015 Sinquefield Cup

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Levon won the 2017 Grenke Chess Classic

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Levon wins the World Cup for a second time in 2017

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Levon is also a national hero in Armenia, having been crowned Sportsman of the Year twice, won the Armenian 1st Category Medal of Honour, and became Honoured Master of Sport of the Republic of Armenia. In the Chess Olympiads, he has led the Armenian team to gold medals in 2006, 2008 and 2012, as well as bronze in 2004.

Here is a position from the game Alexei Shirov vs Levon Aronian 2006 Tal memorial. Can you find the brilliant move that Aronian played with the black pieces here?

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Black to play and win.

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Solution: 1. Ke8!! 2)Kxh8 Kf8 and now white basically is gonna run out of pawn moves while black just shuffles the king between f8 and f7 . So a possible line could go 3)h4 Kf7 4)h5 Kf8 5)h6 Kf7 6)d5 cxd5 7)b3 cxb3 8)c4 b2 9) cxd5 10)b1=Q 10)d6 Qb8#

For a more detailed look at all the different variations and analysis of the entire endgame, check out this video https://youtu.be/perok6V3f7w?t=153