| Étienne Bacrot | |
| Country: | France |
| Birth Date: | 22 January 1983 |
| Birth Place: | Lille, France |
| Grandmaster (1997) | |
| Peakrating: | 2749 (November 2013) |
| Peakranking: | No. 9 (January 2005) |
| Fideid: | 605506 |
Étienne Bacrot (in French pronounced as /etjɛn bakʁo/; born 22 January 1983) is a French chess grandmaster, and as a child, a chess prodigy.
He competed at the Candidates Matches in 2007 and won the Aeroflot Open in 2009. He passed 2700 FIDE rating in 2004 and in January 2005 he became the first French player to enter the top 10.
Bacrot won an individual bronze medal at the 37th Chess Olympiad in 2006 for his performance on board one,[1] as well as four medals at the World Team Championships.
He started playing at age 4. By 10, Bacrot was winning junior competitions, and in 1996, at 13 years of age, he won against Vasily Smyslov. He became a Grandmaster in March 1997 at the age of 14 years and 2 months, making him the youngest person at the time to have held the title until Ruslan Ponomariov took the record that December. He was coached previously by Josif Dorfman.
Bacrot served as one of the four advisors to the world team in the 1999 Kasparov versus the World event.
He has a son, Alexandre, and a daughter, Victoria, with Nathalie Bonnafous.
In 2023 Bacrot took part in the Chess World Cup in Baku as the 52nd seed, making it to the fourth round after defeating Nay Lin Tun, Aleksandar Indjic and the 13th seed Yu Yangyi from China, before losing to Indian GM Vidit Gujrathi.He, then, participated in the FIDE Grand Swiss 2023, where he scored 6,5/11 and was in contention for a top 2 finish until round 8 when he lost against Fabiano Caruana after blundering in time pressure. In this strong tournament he beat Belgian GM Daniel Dardha, German GM Niclas Huschenbeth and 2720-rated GM Yu Yangyi, with a TPR of 2749.After the Grand Swiss, Bacrot played on board 1 for France in the European Team Chess Championship scoring 4/8 as France finished in seventh place.
Bacrot has played several matches against prominent players in his home town of Albert. In 1996 he beat Vasily Smyslov 5–1, in 1997 lost to Viktor Korchnoi 4–2, in 1998 defeated Robert Hübner 3½–2½, in 1999 lost to Alexander Beliavsky 3½–2½, in 2000 lost to Nigel Short 4–2, in 2001 tied 3–3 with Emil Sutovsky, in 2002 beat Boris Gelfand 3½–2½, and in 2004 (there was no match in 2003) won against Ivan Sokolov 3½–2½.