The Most Famous
CHESS PLAYERS from Canada
This page contains a list of the greatest Canadian Chess Players. The pantheon dataset contains 374 Chess Players, 2 of which were born in Canada. This makes Canada the birth place of the 41st most number of Chess Players behind Brazil and Iran.
Top 2
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Canadian Chess Players of all time. This list of famous Canadian Chess Players is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Joël Lautier (1973 - )
With an HPI of 37.39, Joël Lautier is the most famous Canadian Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages on wikipedia.
Joël Lautier (French pronunciation: [ʒɔɛl lotje]) is a French chess grandmaster and one of the world's leading chess players in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1986, he won the U-14 World Youth Chess Championship in Puerto Rico, Argentina. In 1988, he won the World Junior Chess Championship, ahead of stars such as Vasily Ivanchuk, Boris Gelfand and Gregory Serper. He is the youngest player ever to win the World Junior Championship at the age of 15. He is one of the few players who has a lifetime positive score against Garry Kasparov. He was one of the people instrumental in Kramnik winning the Classical World Chess Championship 2000 against Kasparov by preparing the infamous 'Berlin Wall'. He also won the French Chess Championship twice in 2004 and 2005. He was the first president of the Association of Chess Professionals when it was founded in June 2003. In 2006, Lautier gave up competitive chess to pursue a career in investment banking. Since 2009 he has been CEO of the Moscow-based investment banking firm RGG Capital.
2. Jeff Sarwer (1978 - )
With an HPI of 22.21, Jeff Sarwer is the 2nd most famous Canadian Chess Player. Her biography has been translated into 22 different languages.
Jeffrey William Sarwer (born 14 May 1978) is a Canadian-Finnish (dual citizenship) former child chess prodigy whose charismatic personality and chess talent made him a well-known media figure. His chess career and his family's unconventional lifestyle were the subjects of many articles and TV shows. Sarwer's attacking playing style was often compared to that Bobby Fischer, and a tournament game drawn against him by another young chess player, Joshua Waitzkin, was the inspiration for the climax in the film Searching for Bobby Fischer. Sarwer won the under-10 World Youth Chess Championship in Puerto Rico in 1986 representing Canada. When Sarwer was 8, he was believed by many to be one of the strongest prodigies in the history of the game. Allen Kaufman, head of the American Chess Foundation, said, "Jeff at 9 is stronger than Bobby was at 11." Bruce Pandolfini said, "Of the several thousand kids I've taught, Jeff is certainly the most amazing young player I've ever seen."
Pantheon has 2 people classified as chess players born between 1973 and 1978. Of these 2, 2 (100.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living chess players include Joël Lautier and Jeff Sarwer.
