Miguel Illescas

Miguel Illescas Córdoba ( born December 3, 1965 in Barcelona ) is a leading Spanish chess master.

Illescas Cordoba, a professional computer scientist, already decided early on to a professional chess player career. In 1987 and 1988 he won in Las Palmas, 1988, FIDE awarded him the grandmaster title. 1991/92 he won together with Leonid Judassin in Pamplona. In 1992 he came to Leon to Boris Gulko in second place, in Chalkidiki by Vladimir Kramnik and Joël Lautier third. This year, his Elo rating is exceeded for the first time in 2600 points, which he set a Spanish record. In 1993 he was in Wijk aan Zee, which was played in the knockout system for the first and only time, Second after a 1:2 ( 0, -1, = 2) - final defeat against Anatoly Karpov. In the same year he won in Lisbon, the zone tournament and qualified for the Interzonal in Biel, also played in Linares a match against Ljubomir Ljubojević 4:4 ( 0, -0 = 8). In 1995, Illescas Córdoba Zone Tournament of Linares before Tony Miles and was first Spanish masters; 1998 ( tied with Francisco Vallejo Pons ), 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2010, he repeated this success. In 1996, he shared with Veselin Topalov first and second place in Madrid, in 1997/98 he won jointly with Ulf Andersson in Pamplona. 2003/ 04 he won jointly with Luke McShane and Emil Sutovsky again in Pamplona. Since 1986, he regularly represents Spain at the Chess Olympiads.

Illescas Cordoba was repeatedly Sekundant of Vladimir Kramnik: 2000 with its successful world championship match against Garry Kasparov in London, the 2004 duel against Péter Lékó and 2006 when re- unification match against Veselin Topalov. Since 2004 he is also FIDE Senior Trainer.

His Elo rating is 2601 (as of March 2012) so he is # 3 on the Spanish ranking.