Larry Christiansen

The second oldest player in this year’s competition, but also the second highest rated, U.S. Chess Hall of Famer Larry Christiansen has been an important figure in American chess since the early 1970s. Growing up in Riverside, California, Christiansen dominated U.S. Junior competitions in the first half of the 1970s. In 1971 he became the first junior high-school student to win the National High School Championship and then went on to win three consecutive U.S. Junior Championships in 1973, 1974 and 1975.

Internationally, Christiansen first made his mark at the 1975 World Junior Championship where he finished second. Two years later, he won an event in Torremolinos, Spain, making his final Grandmaster norm. This earned him the title without ever having been an International Master, making him a member of a very exclusive club – Mikhail Tal, Vladimir Kramnik and Wang Hao are three others.

The U.S. Champion in 1980, 1983 and 2002, Christiansen was a mainstay of U.S. national teams in the 1980s and 1990s, winning team silver in 1990 and team bronze in the 1982, 1984, 1986 and 1996 Chess Olympiads. He was also a member of the U.S. entries in the 1993 and 1997 World Team Championships where the Americans finished first and second respectively,

Christiansen is a noted teacher who worked with Carissa Yip in her formative years. The editor of Players Chess News in the mid-1980s, Christiansen is the author of Storming the Barricades and Rocking the Ramparts, two books which showcase his aggressive and tactically based style of chess.

One important detail coming into this competition is that Christiansen has not played a rated game since the 2024 U.S. Senior Championship. Will he be rusty? It hasn’t hurt him in the past as he has been remarkably consistent, placing no lower than fourth in the event since it debuted in 2019. This success is due in part to the seriousness with which he approaches this tournament. Rumor has it that Christiansen trains hard for a month prior to each U.S. Senior Championship.

Larry Christiansen was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2008.