Fabiano Caruana

Fabiano Caruana
Fabiano Caruana
	Fabiano Caruana in 2013
Full name	Fabiano Luigi Caruana
Country	United States ; Italy (2005–2015)
Born	July 30, 1992 (age 26); Miami, Florida, US
Title	Grandmaster (2007)
FIDE 2828 (February 2019)
Ranking	No. 2 (August 2018)
Peak ranking	No. 2 (October 2014)

Fabiano Luigi Caruana (born July 30, 1992) is an Italian-American chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, he became a grandmaster at the age of 14 years, 11 months and 20 days—the youngest grandmaster in the history of both Italy and the United States at the time.

Born in Miami to Italian-American parents, Caruana grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He played for the United States until 2005, when he transferred to Italy. He earned his grandmaster title in 2007, and in the same year won his first Italian Chess Championship, a feat he repeated in 2008, 2010 and 2011. He won the Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting in 2012, 2014 and 2015. He also won the Sinquefield Cup 2014, recording a historic 3103 performance rating and improving his Elo rating to 2844, becoming the third-highest-rated player in history. He transferred back to the US in 2015.

Having won the FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15, Caruana qualified for the Candidates Tournament 2016, where he was runner-up to Sergey Karjakin. He won the 2016 US Chess Championship, and represented the US on board 1 at the 42nd Chess Olympiad, winning team gold and individual bronze. He won the London Chess Classic in 2017. He won the Candidates Tournament 2018, becoming the first American challenger for the undisputed World Chess Championship since Bobby Fischer in 1972. In the run-up to the championship match, Caruana won the 5th Grenke Chess Classic, the 6th Norway Chess, and the 6th Sinquefield Cup. He lost the match to Magnus Carlsen in the rapid tiebreaks after drawing 6–6 in the classical games.

Personal life and chess beginnings

Fabiano Luigi Caruana was born on July 30, 1992, in Miami, United States, to Italian-American parents Lou and Santina Caruana.^[1]^[2] He is a dual citizen of Italy and the US.^[3]

At the age of four, his family relocated from Miami to the neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. At the age of five, his chess talent was discovered in an after-school chess program at Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform Jewish congregation in Park Slope. The same year he played his first tournament at the Polgar Chess Center in Queens, New York.^[3]

Until the age of twelve, he lived and played in the United States, occasionally traveling to Europe and South America to participate in tournaments. His first chess coach, from age six to eight, was National Master (NM) Bruce Pandolfini, and from age eight to twelve he studied with GM Miron Sher.

In 2004 at age twelve, he relocated with his family from Brooklyn to Madrid to pursue a professional chess career, playing for Italy from 2005 to 2015. He trained with International Master (IM) Boris Zlotnik in Madrid,^[4] and in 2007 he moved to Budapest to train with grandmaster Alexander Chernin.^[3] In 2010 Caruana moved to Lugano, Switzerland, and, at the end of that year, started to train with grandmaster Vladimir Chuchelov.^[5] He moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 2014.^[6]