14 Facts About Yasser Seirawan

Yasser Seirawan is a Syrian-born American chess grandmaster and four-time United States champion.

Yasser Seirawan won the World Junior Chess Championship in 1979.

Yasser Seirawan's father was Syrian and his mother an English nurse from Nottingham, where he spent some time in his early childhood.

Yasser Seirawan honed his game at a now-defunct coffeehouse, the Last Exit on Brooklyn, playing against the likes of Latvian-born master Viktors Pupols and six-time Washington State Champion James Harley McCormick.

Yasser Seirawan won a game against Viktor Korchnoi, who had two years earlier narrowly lost a match for the world championship.

In 1999, Yasser Seirawan played a ten-game match against Michael Adams in Bermuda.

In 2001, Yasser Seirawan released a plan called "Fresh Start" to reunite the chess world, which at that time had two world champions: Ruslan Ponomariov had gained the title under the auspices of FIDE, while Vladimir Kramnik had beaten Garry Kasparov to take the Classical title.

Yasser Seirawan played six games in the July 2007 FIDE update.

In 2007, Yasser Seirawan unveiled a chess variant created in collaboration with Bruce Harper, called Yasser Seirawan chess or SHARPER chess.

In May 2011, Yasser Seirawan returned from hiatus to competitive chess, playing for the US team in the world team championship in China, where he won silver in first alternate.

Yasser Seirawan had wins versus top GMs Judit Polgar and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.

Yasser Seirawan won the 2011 and 2012 Dutch Open Blitz championship.

Yasser Seirawan is widely known for his expert commentary in live broadcasts on the Internet during important events.

Yasser Seirawan has been named by the chess historian Edward Winter as one of the top five Internet broadcasters.