GM Leonid Kritz
Leonid Kritz is a German chess grandmaster. He learned the game from his father at the age of four.
In his early career, Leonid won multiple gold and silver medals in chess competitions for children in the U10 and U12 categories. In 1999 Leonid became the U16 Junior World Champion.
He became an International Master in 2001 and received the Grandmaster title in 2003 at the age of 19, which made him one of the youngest German grandmasters in history.
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In 2004 Leonid participated in the FIDE knockout World Championship in Tripoli. He was a member of the German national team in the 2004 Chess Olympiad and the European Team Championships from 2005-2007. In 2008 Leonid won the Coca-Cola Chess Scholarship at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and came to the US to study mathematics and finance.
During the four years at UMBC, he was the captain of the university chess team and led it to multiple victories in collegiate championships. In 2014 he was awarded a graduate chess scholarship at University of Texas at Dallas. He graduated two years later with a master’s degree in finance.
Leonid received his chess education by working with some of the world’s leading chess coaches. After he became the World Junior Champion, he worked closely with the French GM Joseph Dorfman – a former coach of the 13th world champion Garry Kasparov.
Since his move to the US, Leonid has been teaching kids and juniors, as well as providing educational services via well-known Internet chess platforms, such as ChessBase, Chess.com, ChessLectures and iChess.
Currently, Leonid works full time as a Portfolio Manager in the quantitative asset management field in Boston, MA. He spend free time with his family, skiing, playing soccer, teaching his kids mathematics, and doing a lot of other fun things!