Evgeny Bareev

◇Yemanzhelinsk to Moscow

Bareev was born in Yemanzhelinsk on 21 November 1966. He won the world under-16 championship at Guayaquil in 1982, and in 1985 he won the First League of the Soviet championship. In 1986 he shared second to seventh place in the Soviet Championship in Kyiv. In 1992 he graduated from the chess faculty of the Moscow Institute of Physical Culture.

FIDE made him a grandmaster in 1989. The following year he shared first place in the Soviet Championship, and in July 1991 he was fourth in the world rankings.

◇Hastings, Linares and Wijk aan Zee

Bareev won the Hastings Premier three years running, in 1990/91, 1991/92 and 1992/93, the last time shared with Judit Polgár. He was second at Biel in 1991, at Tilburg in 1994 and at Wijk aan Zee in 1995, and in 2000 he reached the final of the FIDE World Cup in Shenyang, where he lost to Viswanathan Anand. In 2001 he also reached the final of the Rapid World Cup, where he lost to Kasparov.

At Linares in 1994 he finished fourth with 7½/13, behind Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Alexei Shirov, a result recorded in Kasparov's My Great Predecessors Part V.

In My Great Predecessors Part IV, Kasparov recalls watching Bareev's game against Miguel Illescas at that tournament. It reached the same position as Ivkov–Larsen, Bled 1965, but a different move order hid the connection. According to Kasparov, Illescas chose a weaker continuation than Larsen had played and was left defending a passive position.

In January 2002 he won the Corus tournament at Wijk aan Zee with 9/13, ahead of Grischuk, Adams, Morozevich and Lékó. The following year he was third there, won at Enghien-les-Bains and reached his highest rating, 2739, in October 2003.

◇The world championship

In 2000 Bareev was one of Vladimir Kramnik's seconds for the London match in which Kramnik took the classical world title from Kasparov. With Ilya Levitov he later wrote From London to Elista (2007), about that match and Kramnik's title defences against Lékó and Veselin Topalov; it was the English Chess Federation's Book of the Year for 2008.

At the Dortmund Candidates Tournament of 2002 he reached the semi-final and lost his match to Topalov. Through the 2005 World Cup he qualified for the 2007 Candidates matches, beat Judit Polgár +2 −1 =3 and was then eliminated by Lékó, +0 −2 =3.

◇The team player

Bareev played in the Soviet team at the 1990 Olympiad and in the Russian teams of 1994, 1996, 1998 and 2006, and won team gold in 1990, 1994, 1996 and 1998. He also won the World Team Championship in 1997 and 2005, the European Team Championship in 1992 and 2003, and the European Club Cup four times with three different clubs.

◇Coach, and Canada

In 2006 he set up a school for Russia's leading juniors and ran it until 2010. In 2009 he worked with Lê Quang Liêm, who later became World Blitz Champion. He was head coach of the Russian men's team in 2010–11, when it won the Olympiad silver medal, and between 2010 and 2014 he was head coach of Russia's junior, men's and women's national teams.

Bareev moved to Toronto in 2006 and transferred to the Canadian federation in 2015. He played for Canada at the Olympiads of 2016 and 2018, won the Canadian zonal championship in 2019 and shared first place in it in 2021. In Canada he has coached young players including Razvan Preotu and Michael Song. His book Say No to Chess Principles! appeared in 2019.