Thomas Luther

Thomas Luther (born 4 November 1969 in Erfurt) is a German chess player and International Grandmaster of Chess. In 2000 he was a member of the German team that won the silver medal in the 34th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul.

He started to play chess at the age of 4. Even in his childhood days he started to avidly read classic chess literature and learned a lot by himself. 1978 he became a member of the club HSG Medizin Erfurt. 1980, 1981 and 1984 he won the respective East Germany championship for his age class. 1986 he won the 12. GDR youth-championship in correspondence chess. Beginning with 1985 he played for Mikroelektronik Erfurt in the Oberliga, the highest league in the GDR.

1988 he was awarded the title International Master by FIDE. After a series of further successes, among them second places at the GDR championship in Zittau 1989 and in Altensteig 1991 and victories in Andorra 1992, Lenk and Hamburg 1993 and finally his first (all-)German championship 1993 (after a 2-0 victory in the final against Thomas Pähtz he became Grandmaster in 1994.

1997 Thomas Luther qualified for the world championships in Groningen. In this KO-tournament he won the first round 3.5-2.5 against Lajos Portisch but lost (0.5-1.5) against Vladimir Akopian in round 2.

2001 he qualified again and won the first round in Moscow 3-1 against Sergey Volkov but lost against Ilya Smirin (0.5-1.5).

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