GMYAZ

I started to play chess in July of 1972.  I was twelve years old and it was the height of the Bobby Fischer boom.  In Seattle, I was very fortunate to have a close circle of chess friends who clobbered me in Bughouse and helped me enormously.  I had also had numerous coaches for whom I'll forever be grateful.  David Chapman (first teacher roughly 1200); Jeffery Parson (roughly 1800); James Blackwood (2200); James H. McCormick; Victors Pupols; Peter Biyiasas and many others as well.  In 1975 I earned a 2200, "master" chess rating.  In 1978 I became the US Junior Champion, repeated in 1979 and then won the World Junior Chess Championship in Skien, Norway. In 1980, I tied for first with Walter Browne in Wijk Aan Zee, scoring 10.5/13.  Good enough for my third and final GM norm.  In the 1980 Maltase Olympiad my GM title was confirmed. 

At that time, I was rather pleased myself, I had become a GM at 19 years and ten months old.  Quite an achievement.  It was bettered of course by Bobby Fischer, whose youngest GM title ever would never be surpassed …  Boris Spassky and Henrique Mecking.  I was the fourth youngest GM in the world.  Now I don't mention this bit of trivia at all as I suspect I may not be in the top 500 youngest GM ever...

During Wijk 1980, Viktor Korchtnoi invited me to work with him and GM Michael Stean in his 1980/81 Candidate Matches and World Championship match against Anatoly Karpov.  I'm enormously grateful to Victor and Michael as well.  It was the greatest chess learning experience of my life.

I became a two-time Candidate for the World Championship, a four time US Champion, I was ranked in the world's top ten and played for ten US Olympiad teams and two World Teams.  I retired from tournament play in September 2003.  (Yasser)

For twelve years I was the publisher of Inside Chess magazine.

In 2007, my friend, Bruce Harper and I unveiled an enhanced chess game now called Seirawan chess.  We wanted to call it "Sharper Chess" to reflect both of our inputs but the "Sharper Image Store" had trademarked the name.  In order to avoid a lawsuit, we settled for "S-Chess."  Which now has a platform here on chess.com.  The first ever event was a 12 board simultaneous exhibition held March 31, 2007 in Vancouver, Canada.  Which was a lot of fun!

In July 2011, I returned from an eight year hiatus to competitive chess, playing in the 2011 US Championship as well as the world team championship in Ningbo, China, where I won a Silver medal on 4th board.  I had two nice wins vs. GM J. Polgar and GM Mamedyarov.  I now mostly play exhibitions and S-Chess competitions which I absolutely love.  Yasser