Vasyl Mykhailovych Ivanchuk (Ukrainian: Василь Михайлович Іванчук; born March 18, 1969) is a Ukrainian chess grandmaster. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 1988. A leading chess player since 1988, Ivanchuk has been ranked at No. 2 on the FIDE world rankings three times (July 1991, July 1992, October 2007).
Ivanchuk has won Linares, Wijk aan Zee, Tal Memorial, Gibraltar Masters and M-Tel Masters titles. He has also won the World Blitz Championship in 2007 and the World Rapid Championship in 2016.
Ivanchuk was born in Kopychyntsi on March 18, 1969. His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a physics teacher. He began playing chess after his father bought him a magnetic chess set for his birthday. The first chess book he read was Journey to the Chess Kingdom by Yuri Averbakh and Mikhail Beilin.
In 1985, he won the USSR Junior Chess Championship, and won bronze in the Ukrainian Chess Championship. The following year, he joined the chess faculty of the Lviv State University of Physical Culture.
He won the 1986/1987 European Junior Chess Championship in Groningen and first achieved international notice by winning the 1988 New York Open scoring 7½/9 points, ahead of a field of grandmasters. He tied for first place in the 1988 World Junior Chess Championship at Adelaide, but lost the title on tiebreak to Joël Lautier. He was awarded the Grandmaster title in 1988, and entered the world top 10 the same year.
Ivanchuk won the Linares tournament in 1989, 1991, and 1995. In 1991, of the fourteen players participating, eight of them, including World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, rated in the top ten in the world, and another two among the world's top 50 players. Ivanchuk beat Kasparov by a half point, defeating Kasparov in their head-to-head game.
It was widely believed that Ivanchuk might become world champion . He came close in 2002, when he reached the final of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2002. Ivanchuk consistently ranked among the top 10 from July 1988 to October 2002 and among the top 20 up to June 2009, but Mark Crowther's The Week in Chess said his erratic play was due to "poor temperament." His results saw him drop as low as 30th in July 2009, but he returned to the top ten in the next list. His inability to become world champion despite his immense talent and longevity has been attributed to his admittedly poor nerves, demonstrated by blunders such as at the 1994 London Grand Prix blitz, when he failed to complete a strong attack on Viswanathan Anand with a mate in one despite having 0:54 left on the clock. Ivanchuk's nerves were notably exposed during the high-tension atmosphere of World Championship match-format tournaments, such as in 2002 where he was heavily favored in the FIDE championship final after having defeated defending champion Anand in the semifinals, only to lose to countryman Ruslan Ponomariov in a major upset, denying him the championship. Subsequent match-play tournaments in World Championship cycles saw Ivanchuk consistently underperform; in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004, Chess World Cup 2005, Chess World Cup 2007, and Chess World Cup 2009, he failed to advance past the third round despite being seeded No. 5, No. 1, No. 1 and No. 6 respectively in those events.
Ivanchuk's world championship aspirations were also dampened by the title split from 1993 to 2006. Due to obligations with FIDE, Ivanchuk and Anand did not participate in the 2002 Dortmund Candidates tournament for the Classical World Chess Championship 2004. He was then narrowly excluded, on the basis of rating, from the rival FIDE World Chess Championship 2005. While he won one of the events of the FIDE Grand Prix 2008–2010, his overall performance was not enough to qualify him for the World Chess Championship 2012 candidates tournament.
Ivanchuk played in the 2013 Candidates Tournament, which took place in London, from 15 March to 1 April. He finished seventh, with a score of +3−5=6. The tournament was notable for his unusually poor time management (he lost two games on time), as well as his major impact on the leaderboard despite being a tail ender: he managed to defeat both leaders Magnus Carlsen (round 12) and Vladimir Kramnik (round 14), resulting in Carlsen qualifying for the World Chess Championship by tiebreak.
In 2016, Ivanchuk won the World Rapid Chess Championship in Doha, Qatar, with a score of 11/15. He defeated Carlsen, among many others.
In July 2016, Ivanchuk began playing checkers and has achieved a certain level of success. In the World Draughts Federation's database, he achieved his peak rating of 1997 in July 2019, and his peak ranking at No. 1050 in July 2024.
Ivanchuk is noted for creative technical play, often seeking imbalances and breaking accepted principles. He sacrifices material after deep calculation.
His chess.com profile describes his playing style as "one of the most creative and unpredictable styles of play in recent history." saying he has a "unique universal style" while being capable of "imaginative play and unexpected sacrifices."
The Oxford Companion to Chess (1992) describes Ivanchuk as follows:
Although blessed with great energy and ability, Ivanchuk is also moody and emotional. Losing his temper, he has been known to sweep the pieces from the board during a tournament. Seen by some as an anti-hero, he says, 'What's the good of setting goals when their achievement is never in one's own hands?'
The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games (1998) states:
If he were able to make the most of his talent, he would surely be a real contender for World No. 1 spot, but he is a highly emotional player, who takes losses badly, tends to rush critical decisions when under pressure and sometimes lacks motivation.
Viswanathan Anand said in 2004 that Ivanchuk was the "most eccentric" player he had met: