Sjakkfantomet

Bartosz Socko (31) is top seed during this years Arctic Chess Challenge and he was born on the 10th of November, 1978, in the town Piaseczno in central Poland. As a Junior player he showed his talent by winning the polish championship under 16 in 1994, and under 18 in 1995. Since 1995, he has been a regular participant in the Polish Championships. He placed second in 2003, 2005, 2006 (tied) and in 2007. Then in 2008 he finally won the Polish Championship with 9/14 without any losses. On FIDEs 1st of July list 2009 he is clearly the highest ranked player in Poland with an elo-rating of 2656. In 2007 he also participated in Arctic Chess Challenge and then came with a all time high rating of 2660, he then finished as 7th with 6.5/9 in a very strong field.

In 1999 Bartosz Socko got his Grandmaster title in chess. He has been a regular participant on the Polish national team since the Chess Olympics in 2000. In Istanbul this year he got the silver medal for the score of 8.0/11, and a performance rating of 2678 on board 4 for Poland. I Bundesliga 2008/09 Socko played the 2.board for SC Kreuzberg, his team for many years. The strong GM Sargissian plays first and Socko took a convincing 5/7 and beat Magnus Carlsen with the black pieces in a sharp Kings Indian - his strongest single result ever. In the season 2006/07 he achived the strong score of 9.5/15 in BL after playing all the matches! Socko has won several strong international tournaments. He got first place in open X Emanuell Laskers memorial in 2002 and the Acropolis-B in 2004. The summer of 2006 was a golden time for Bartosz who won the open section if the traditional GM tournament in Biel, facing a field of more than 20 Grand Masters. Less than a month later he won the Rubinstein Memorial together with the Robert Kempinski and 2006 was without any doubt Soãko's best year ever. From July 2004 till July 2007 he pushed his Elo over 100 point up, and hence played himself close to the World elite with 2660, and nr.49 on the world rank 1st of July 2007. Present status is 73th rank.

Socko is married to GM Monika Soãko, b. Bobrowska, and together they have 3 children. He comes to Troms¸ this year with his wife Monika and their 7 years old son Szymon - which both will participate in the tournament. Bartosz Socko has a sharp playing style and he is not afraid of taking risks. He plays complicated positions rather well, but have a sound positional understanding. As white his main weapon is 1.e4 which he varies with 1.d4 quite often. With black he is more than willing to go into sharp openings as the Kings Indian or the Winawer French but he has a wide opening repertoire and is quite universal in his playing style. Often Socko gets his points by putting his opponents in highly complicated positions, but the foundation of his game is sober positional knowledge. In other terms, his sharp style of play suits big opens, since you need huge scores to win them as he has proven on several occasions.

Here you see an attractive combination by Bartosz Socko as black vs. GM David Baramidze from this years season of the German Bundesliga: Black to move - do you find his first two moves?