Jaan Ehlvest

Ehlvest's tournament victories include the 1980 USSR Junior Chess Championship,^[3] the 1983 European Junior Championship, the 1986 Estonian Championship, the 1994 New York Open, and the 2003 World Open in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When SK Rockaden won the 2001 Swedish championship they fielded Ehlvest.^[4]

He was a member of the gold medal-winning Soviet Union team at the 28th Chess Olympiad in Thessaloniki 1988^[5] and played for Estonia in the Chess Olympiads of 1992–2004.^[6]

In 1997 and 2000, Ehlvest tied for first place at the U.S. Masters Chess Championship.

In 2006, unsatisfied with the lack of support from the Estonian Chess Federation, Ehlvest decided to move to the United States; since then, he has been a member of the USCF and competed internationally for the US.^[7]

In March 2007, Ehlvest accepted an invitation to play an eight-game match against the chess program Rybka, one of the strongest chess programs in existence. He was playing Black in all games, but was given pawn odds (Rybka was playing each game a pawn down; a different white pawn was removed in each game). He lost the match by 2½:5½ (+1−4=3). In a following rematch, the pawn odds were removed, Ehlvest was given White in every game, twice the time on the clock, and significant computational handicaps were placed on the machine. Ehlvest lost decisively, 1½:4½.

In 2008 he won the Pan American-Continental Championship, which took place in Boca Raton, Florida.^[8][9]

Ehlvest's younger brother, Jüri Ehlvest, was a well-known writer in Estonia.

Ehlvest studied psychology at Tartu State University (now, University of Tartu). In 2004, Ehlvest published his autobiography, The Story of a Chess Player. While U.S. citizen, he spends most of his time in Estonia.