Sergey Tiviakov during his popular lecture about c3 Sicilian during the Gjøvik festival 2008-09. Tuesday evening he lectures again here at Fagernes!

Sergey Tiviakov (38) from Netherlands is the highest rated player of the festival, with his present FIDE rating of 2624. From origin Tiviakov is a Russian from Krasnodar, and he won Olympic gold with Russia at the 1994 Moscow chess olympiad. Later he has settled in Netherlands and won the European team championship with his new country in 2001 and 2005. In the year 2008 he crowned his career till now gaining the individual European championship. Several times he has been amongst the 30 highest rated players in the world, with 2699 from 2005 as his highest rating figure so far.

Sergey Tiviakov participated in several Norwegian tournaments. The most impressive result was his 8 1/2 points from 9 against Magnus Carlsen and others at the Gausdal Classics tournament 2005:
http://www.bergensjakk.no/gausdal/gausdal2005/

At Gjøvik 2008-09 Sergey tied for second in the strong main tournament, behind Jon Ludvig Hammer. Now we wish very welcome to Norway again!