Luke McShane

Luke McShane
Luke McShane (2013)
Full name	Luke James McShane
Country	England
Born	(1984-01-07) 7 January 1984 (age 33) London, England
Title	Grandmaster
FIDE rating	2644 (March 2017) (No. 50 in the June 2013 FIDE World Rankings)
Peak rating	2713 (July 2012)

Luke James McShane (born 7 January 1984) is an English chess player. A former World Youth Champion and chess prodigy, he has become one of England's leading players and a member of the Olympiad team. He has also been a trader in London's financial sector.

McShane won the World Under-10 Championship in Duisburg at the age of eight. Shortly afterwards he found a sponsor in the form of computer company Psion and played Garry Kasparov at a simultaneous exhibition in 1995. At sixteen he became the youngest ever British Grandmaster, gaining the three results required ("grandmaster norms") in tournaments in Germany, Iceland and the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen, Denmark. He held the record until David Howell broke it in January 2007. In January 2004 McShane was ranked second in the world among junior (under-21) players behind Teimour Radjabov.

Among McShane's more notable results are joint first in the 1998 Bunratty Masters in Ireland with John Nunn, winning five of his six games, and joint winner with Stuart Conquest and Bogdan Lalić of the Iona Tech Masters in Kilkenny. McShane led the 2002 British Championship in Torquay, and was in a good position in the final round before blundering and losing to the tournament's winner, Ramachandran Ramesh. McShane finished tied for fourth.

From around 2002, McShane has been facing stiffer opposition, including players from the world's top ten. He played for England in the 2002 Chess Olympiad in Bled, scoring 6½/11, and won the silver medal at the World Junior Championship in Goa. In 2003 he finished a respectable fifth in the strong Hrokurinn tournament in Reykjavík, finishing ahead of Britain's number one player Michael Adams and drawing games against Viktor Korchnoi and Alexei Shirov. Shortly afterwards, he beat Shirov in a Reykjavík blitz tournament. In the 2003 Siegman tournament in Malmö, he finished third with 5½/9, drawing his game with the tournament winner, Vasily Ivanchuk. Also in 2003, McShane finished 27th out of 207 with 8/13 in the strong European Individual Championships in Silivri in Turkey, 1½ points behind the winner, Zurab Azmaiparashvili. Shortly afterwards he tied for first with Alexei Dreev and Krishnan Sasikiran in the North Sea Cup played in Esbjerg in Denmark with 6½/9, finished tied for second in the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen with 8½/11 and won the Malmö Masters with 7½/9, a point and a half ahead of his nearest rival. In 2009/10 he tied for first through fifth place with Eduardas Rozentalis, Pavel Ponkratov, Radosław Wojtaszek and Igor Lysyj at the 39th Rilton Cup in . In 2010 he won the third Remco Heite tournament in Wolvega.