Yasser Seirawan

Seirawan is widely known for his expert commentary in live broadcasts on the Internet during important events. He has been named by the chess historian Edward Winter as one of the top five Internet broadcasters. In 2019, he joined the Chessbrahs (headed by Eric Hansen and Aman Hambleton), and provided coverage for the 2019 World Cup along with Hansen and Hambleton.

In May 2011, Seirawan returned from hiatus to competitive chess, playing for the U.S. team in the world team championship in China, where he won silver in first alternate. He had wins versus top GMs Judit Polgar and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. He only lost one game.

Seirawan won the 2011 and 2012 Dutch Open Blitz championship.

In 2007, Seirawan unveiled his enhanced chess game called Seirawan chess. The first ever event was a 12-board simultaneous exhibition held March 31, 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Following a series of events Seirawan participated in China during September 2003, there were reports that he would be retiring as a professional player. In the July 2007 FIDE list, Seirawan had an Elo rating of 2634, placing him in the top 100 chess players in the world, and America's number four (behind Hikaru Nakamura, Gata Kamsky and Alexander Onischuk). He played six games in the July 2007 FIDE update.

In 2001, Seirawan released a plan called "Fresh Start" to reunite the chess world, which at that time had two world champions: Ruslan Ponomariov had gained the title under the auspices of FIDE, while Vladimir Kramnik had beaten Garry Kasparov to take the Classical title. It called for one match between Ponomariov and Kasparov (the world number one), and another between Kramnik and the winner of the 2002 Einstein tournament in Dortmund (who turned out to be Péter Lékó). The winners of these matches would then play each other to become undisputed World Champion. This plan was signed by all parties on May 6, 2002, in the so-called "Prague Agreement". The Kramnik-Leko match took place (the match was drawn, with Kramnik retaining his title); the Kasparov-Ponomariov match was canceled in 2003, and this particular plan became moot when Kasparov retired in 2005. In the end the FIDE World Chess Championship 2006 between Kramnik and Veselin Topalov reunited the world championship title.

In 1999, Seirawan played a ten-game match against Michael Adams in Bermuda. The match was drawn +2–2=6.

Seirawan qualified for the 1985 and 1988-1990 Candidates Tournaments. In the 1985 tournament in Montpellier he scored 7/15 placing joint 10th, and in the 1988-1990 tournament in St John, a knockout tournament, he was knocked out by Jon Speelman in the preliminary round.

Seirawan began playing chess at 12; at 13 he became Washington junior champion. At 19 he won the World Junior Chess Championship. He also won a game against Viktor Korchnoi, who had two years before narrowly lost a match for the world championship. Impressed, Viktor then invited Seirawan to Switzerland, where Korchnoi was training for his 1981 world title match against Anatoly Karpov.

Yasser Seirawan (Arabic: ياسر سيروان ‎; born March 24, 1960) is an American chess grandmaster and four-time United States champion. He won the World Junior Chess Championship in 1979. Seirawan is also a published chess author and commentator.