| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1980-11-25)November 25, 1980 (age 45) |
| Chess career | |
| Country |  Russia (until 2010) Canada (since 2010) |
| Title | Grandmaster (2006) |
| FIDE rating | 2419 (February 2026) |
| Peak rating | 2571 (April 2014) |
Bator Sambuev (Russian:Батор Самбуев; born November 25, 1980) is a Russian-Canadianchess player who holds theFIDE title ofGrandmaster.[1] He is a four-time winner of the Canadian chess championship and has represented Canada twice atChess Olympiads.
Born inUlan-Ude,[2] Russia, Sambuev was awarded byFIDE the titles ofInternational Master in 1999 and Grandmaster in 2006. He immigrated toToronto, Canada, in June 2007 and moved toMontreal in 2010.[3]
He won theCanadian Closed Championship in 2011 after a two-game playoff againstEric Hansen.[4][5] In 2012, Sambuev again won the championship, earning the right to participate in theFIDE World Cup 2013, where he playedAlexander Morozevich in the first round. Sambuev won the first game[6] but lost the second[7] and was eliminated after losing therapid-play playoff (1½-½).[8]
Sambuev has been a team member at two Olympiads:
Sambuev won the 2017 Canadian Championship (Zonal 2.2) in Montreal. He finished =1st with IMNikolay Noritsyn in the 9-round Swiss with 8/9.[11] They played four rapid games (15m + 10s) with White winning each time. Sambuev then won a controversial blitz playoff (1.5/0.5). In it, Sambuev held Noritsyn's queen in his hand during a time scramble. Noritsyn used an upside-down rook when hepromoted to a queen. The arbiters, mistakenly believing the queen was on the table, ruled that the promotion had been to a rook rather than a queen, leading to a win for Sambuev. After the match, Noritsyn appealed to theChess Federation of Canada, but the appeal was denied.[12][13]
Sambuev played in the2017 World Cup atTbilisi where he was eliminated in the first round byWei Yi.
He was =1st at the 2023 Canadian championship, with Nikolay Noritsyn andShawn Rodrigue-Lemieux.[14]
Sambuev has frequently been the victor or the runner-up atSwiss tournaments in Canada and has been the top-rated Canadian player.[15][1]
