Alexei Barsov

Alexei Vladimirovich Barsov was born on 3 April 1966 in Samarkand. He is a chess grandmaster (2000; international master since 1992) whose first coaches were Grigory Esterlis, Viktor Izmailov and Sergey Pinchuk. He graduated from the law faculty of Samarkand State University in 1987.

He placed third at the Dynamo Society championship in 1989 and shared 3rd-5th at the 1999 Asian Championship. He won the Zeeland Open in Vlissingen (1995), Oxford (1998), York (1999, jointly with Tiger Hillarp Persson and Julian Hodgson), the Hastings International Congress (2001, jointly with Harikrishna and Sasikiran), Saint-Quentin (2004) and Casablanca (2005), the 4th Beirut Open (2011) and the 2nd Central Asia Chess Cup in Bishkek (2012, with Semetey Tologontegin, on tiebreak). He won the Uzbekistani Chess Championship in 2006 and 2010.

He played in the World Cups of 2001 and 2004 and lost in the first round of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004 to Alexander Beliavsky. For Uzbekistan he played at the Olympiads in Istanbul (2000), Calvia (2004), Turin (2006), Dresden (2008) and Khanty-Mansiysk (2010). He has played for several European clubs, including in the German Bundesliga, and for some years coached the former FIDE world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov.