GM Lu Shanglei in 6th "Vardaris" 2020

We are delighted to announce the participation of Grandmaster Lu Shanglei in the 6th International Chess Tournament "Vardaris", which will take place in Thessaloniki from February 27th to March 2nd.

The participation of this top Chinese chess player (no. 15 in his country) in an open tournament in our country is another great success for the chess of the city of Thessaloniki, but also for the entire chess events in Greece. It is extremely rare to observe chess players of this level to be at the table next to you. So, we are expecting this great opportunity with great joy and impatience!

Shanglei will come to Vardaris along with WIM Gu Tianlu and GM Zeng Chongsheng.

We thank Shanglei very much for this honor.

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Few biographical data for Shanglei Lu.

Lu Shanglei, born 10 July 1995, is a Chinese chess Grandmaster and 2014 World Junior Chess Champion.

He was awarded by FIDE the title Grandmaster (GM) in October 2011. 

Many are his individual as well as his team achievements. 

We can only mention some of them:

In August 2011, Lu came second, behind GM Li Shilong, at the 8th Dato' Arthur Tan Malaysia Open in Kuala Lumpur. The following year, he won the 1st Grand Europe Open in Golden Sands, Bulgaria. 

In 2013, he played for the Chinese men's team in the China-USA Chess Summit in Ningbo, China. The match was won by the Chinese. 

In June 2014, at the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in Dubai, Lu was the only one who won a game against the eventual winner, Magnus Carlsen, in the blitz event. In October 2014, Lu won the World Junior Chess Championship in Pune, India with a score of 10/13 points. Thanks to this victory he qualified for the 2015 Chess World Cup. 

In April 2015, he finished fourth at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, and second at the Aeroflot blitz tournament. In June 2015, he won two blitz tournaments in Bulgaria, the Golden Sands Blitz and the Albena Blitz, both with a score of 9/11 points. In the subsequent month, Lu helped the Chinese team to win the 9th China-Russia Match, held with the Scheveningen system. At the Chess World Cup 2015 he knocked out Alexander Moiseenko and Wang Hao in rounds one and two respectively, then he was eliminated by Veselin Topalov in the third round after the first set of rapid tiebreaker games.

In 2016, Lu Shanglei won the Asian Blitz Championship in Tashkent and the Serbian Open.  

Lu plays for the Zhejiang team in the China Chess League.