Baadur Jobava (Georgian: ბაადურ ჯობავა; born 26 November 1983) is a Georgian chess grandmaster and three-time Georgian champion (2003,[1] 2007,[2] 2012[3]). He competed in the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2004 and in the FIDE World Cup in 2005, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2017, where he reached round of 16 after defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi, and in 2021. He also participated in the FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15, where he finished joint 4th out of 12 participants in the Tashkent Leg after beating Sergey Karjakin. He won the individual board performance gold medals in the Chess Olympiads of 2004 and 2016.
| Baadur Jobava | |
|---|---|
Jobava at the 2016 Chess Olympiad
| |
| Country | Georgia |
| Born | (1983-11-26) 26 November 1983 (age 40) Gali, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Title | Grandmaster (2001) |
| FIDE rating | 2582 (June 2024) |
| Peak rating | 2734 (September 2012) |
| Peak ranking | No. 19 (September 2012) |
Jobava won the Dubai Open in 2003 with a score of 7 points out of 9.[4] He took part in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004, where he was knocked out in the first round by Ruben Felgaer. He won the 2nd Samba Cup in Skanderborg, Denmark in 2005.[5] In 2006 Jobava won the Railyaway Hotel Cup[6] and the prestigious Aeroflot Open.[7]
In 2008 he tied for 1st–8th with Nigel Short, Vadim Milov, Aleksej Aleksandrov, Tamaz Gelashvili, Alexander Lastin, Gadir Guseinov and Farid Abbasov in the President's Cup in Baku.[8] Jobava won the silver medal in the European Individual Championship 2010, held in Rijeka. In August 2011 he tied for 1st–2nd with Hrant Melkumyan in the Lake Sevan tournament in Martuni and won the event on tie-break.[9] In December 2011 he won the 32nd Edoardo Crespi Trophy in Milan with 8½/9, finishing two points ahead of second placed Vladimir Malaniuk.[10] In the same month Jobava won the European Rapid Chess Championship in Warsaw ahead of 746 players.[11]
In January 2014, Jobava finished equal second and third on tiebreak in the Tata Steel Challengers tournament in Wijk aan Zee scoring 8½/13.[12] In the following month he won the David Bronstein Memorial in Minsk on tiebreak over Sergey Fedorchuk and Mikhailo Oleksienko.[13] In July he finished second behind Wesley So at the ACP Golden Classic in Bergamo, Italy.[14] In August, 2015, he took clear first place in the 19th HZ Chess TournamentinVlissingen, the Netherlands, scoring 8/9 points (+7−0=2).[15] In 2017 Jobava tied for first with Maxim Matlakov and Vladimir Fedoseev in the European Individual Championship in Minsk, taking the silver medal on tiebreak.[16] In 2019, Jobava took clear first place in Abu Dhabi Masters scoring 8/9 points and 2904 performance rating.[17]
Jobava has a (+2−2=3) record against Magnus Carlsen, (+2−1=3) record against Sergey Karjakin, (+1−1=3) record against Ian Nepomniachtchi, (+4−0=1) record against Leinier Domínguez and a (+2−0=2) record against Teimour Radjabov.[18][19][20][21][22] Jobava won the match against Radoslaw Wojtaszek in 2012 with a 5-3 score and has an overall (+5−1=5) record.[23]
Jobava won 4 out of the first 6 Titled Tuesday blitz events held on Chess.com and streams similar tournaments alongside casual games on Twitch to his 20,000 followers under the username "JamesBlunder".[24][25][26][27]
Jobava has played for the Georgian national team in the Chess Olympiad since 2000.[28] He won the individual gold medal in 2004, scoring 8½/10 points. In 2010, he defeated the world's number one player Magnus Carlsen in the Georgia–Norway match. In 2016, he won the individual gold medal for the best first board performance, which included wins over Richard Rapport, Francisco Vallejo Pons and the former FIDE world champions Ruslan Ponomariov and Veselin Topalov with a performance rating of 2926 which is the highest performance rating for board 1 since Garry Kasparov's 2933 performance rating in 2002.[29][30]
Jobava is credited with popularizing an opening sometimes called the Jobava London System, successfully employing it against Veselin Topalov and Ruslan Ponomariov, also known as the Rapport–Jobava System, which is characterized by the moves 1.d4, 2.Nc3, and 3.Bf4.[31][32][33] The opening was first played by James Mason in 1882.[34] He's one of the most prolific users of Larsen's Opening in the modern era, having beaten Yu Yangyi in the Tata Steel Challengers 2014, Daniil Dubov in the Bronstein Memorial 2014, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in the FIDE Grand Prix 2015 and David Howell in the FIDE Grand Swiss 2019 with it.[35]
On February 3, 2023, Jobava accused GM Xu Xiangyu of cheating after losing to him during the Airthings Masters Play-In and publicly berated chess.com team members after the game saying "Ban all these Chinese motherf***ers." This resulted in him being banned from all chess.com prize events for the remainder of 2023 for the alleged racism.[36][37][38]
His younger brother Beglar Jobava is also a chess player, an International Master.[39]