Maxime Vachier Lagrave is a young French Grandmaster chess prodigy, already with a brilliant career and showing promise for greater achievements in the years to come.

Immensely precocious, he won the French Championships in 2007 at the age of 16 + years, which made him the second youngest French Champion in his country’s history.

Vachier Lagrave caused a stir last year when he first participated in the Biel Chess Festival. He remained undefeated after 10 games and won the Grandmaster Tournament at 18, beating two former world no. 2’s (Ivanchuk and Morozevich). His eighth round victory with black pieces over Alexander Morozevich was selected as the best game in the Festival.

Vachier Lagrave did not stop here, but went on to be crowned Junior World Champion in November 2009 in Puerto Madryn in Argentina. This young Parisian has set his sights to be among the world’s top 10 and is not making a secret of it.

Now he has got his mathematics degree and the French number one is all set to start on a professional full time chess career. A real estate consulting company has pledged to support him to pursue his passion and to consolidate his position in the most congenial circumstances.

Maxime is the son of a computer engineer father and a teacher mother, and he first started playing chess at age of 5, when he taught himself to read and started going to school a year in advance.

He went on to become the eighth youngest chess Grandmaster in history when he was 14 years and 4 months.