Rustam Kasimdzhanov

Rustam Kasimdzhanov was born on 5 December 1979 in Tashkent and learned chess at the age of five. He was Asian junior champion in 1994 and a grandmaster from 1997, won the Asian championship in 1998 and took second place at the 1999 World Junior Championship in Yerevan. He won tournaments in Essen (2001) and Pamplona (2002) and came second in Hyderabad in 2002.

At the 2004 FIDE Knockout World Championship in Tripoli he beat Vassily Ivanchuk, Zoltan Almasi, Alexander Grischuk and Veselin Topalov, then Michael Adams in the final by 4.5–3.5, and became World Champion. Before the event his rating was 2640, 54th in the FIDE list. He then won a tournament in Pune. His peak rating is 2715 (May 2015).

He plays in the German Bundesliga for Bad Godesberg. He worked as a second to Viswanathan Anand in his 2008, 2010 and 2012 world championship matches and helped Sergey Karjakin (2016) and Fabiano Caruana (2018) prepare against Magnus Carlsen. He received the Uzbekiston iftixori title (2000) and the Order of Amir Temur (decree of 14 July 2004, for winning the world title); Russian Wikipedia reports that in 2026 he was named an Honoured Coach of Uzbekistan.