Which title was conferred to Thomas Luther in 2014?
Thomas Luther Thomas Luther ( born November 4th 1969 in Erfurt ) is a German chess player and International Grandmaster of chess . In 2000 he was a member of the German team that won the silver medal in the 34th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul . Childhood and Youth . He started to play chess at the age of four . Even in his childhood days he started to avidly read classic chess literature and learned a lot by himself . 1978 he became a member of the club HSG Medizin Erfurt . 1980 , 1981 and 1984 he won the respective East Germany championship for his age class . 1986 he won the 12 . GDR youth-championship in correspondence chess . Beginning with 1985 he played for Mikroelektronik Erfurt in the Oberliga , the highest league in the GDR . Chess career . 1988 he was awarded the title International Master by FIDE . After a series of further successes , among them second places at the GDR championship in Zittau 1989 and in Altensteig 1991 and victories in Andorra 1992 , Lenk and Hamburg 1993 and finally his first ( all- ) German championship 1993 ( after a 2–0 victory in the final against Thomas Pähtz he became Grandmaster in 1994 . World- and National Championship Results . 1997 Thomas Luther qualified for the world championships in Groningen . In this KO-tournament he won the first round 3.5–2.5 against Lajos Portisch but lost ( 0.5–1.5 ) against Vladimir Akopian in round 2 . 2001 he qualified again and won the first round in Moscow 3–1 against Sergey Volkov but lost against Ilya Smirin ( 0.5–1.5 ) . In 2002 he won the German championship in Saarbrücken again , outdistancing Alexander Graf and Florian Handke . He won his third German national championship in 2006 in Osterburg in a tie-breaker with Vitaly Kunin and Artur Yusupov . German National Team . Between 1998 and 2006 Thomas Luther was often part of the German selection representing Germany in various international team tournaments : in the Olympiads 1998 in Elista ( 6th place ) , 2000 in Istanbul ( 2nd place ) , 2002 in Bled ( 14th place ) and 2006 in Turin ( 15th place ) . He also played for Germany in the World Team Chess Championship of 2001 and the European Team Chess Championship of 2003 in Plovdiv . IPCA . Thomas Luther , who suffers from dysmelia played at the 39th Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk , 2010 first board for the IPCA ( International Physically Disabled Chess Association ) and made 6.5 points out of 10 . Tournament victories . During his active career he won many international tournaments , i.e . Lippstadt ( 1994 ) , Hastings ( 1994/95 ) , Bissen ( 1995 ) , Apolda ( 1994 and 1999 ) , Turin ( 1996 ) , Cienfuegos ( 1997 ) , Bad Zwesten ( 1998 ) , Nova Gorica ( 2000 ) , Böblingen ( 2005 ) , Oberwart ( 2005 ) and Bad Homburg ( 2008 ) . In 2009 he won 6th LGA Premium Chess Cup in Nürnberg . In October 2011 he won the first World Chess Games for Disabled with a perfect score of 7 out of 7 . FIDE official and DSB official . He is the head of the FIDE Commission on Disabled and played for the IPCA team once . He is also head of the division for competitive chess ( Referent für Spitzenschach ) in the German chess federation . Game . Thomas Luthers style is tactically oriented , which makes him a formidable opponent for even the strongest player . The following game is typical where he attacks former Candidate Robert Hübner right out of the opening . The game was played in the penultimate round of the German championship 2002 and laid the ground for Thomas later winning the title . The comments are based on personal conversations with Thomas Luther himself . Black already offers a pawn sacrifice . Due to the gambit-style opening the position immediately becomes sharp and concrete . After 4 . d5xc6 Sb8xc6 black has a good game . Either way , Black absolutely wants to sacrifice a pawn . White didnt want to take the risk of accepting the second sacrifice . After 6 . e6xf7+ Ke8xf7 the rook h8 dangerously comes into play too . Again Black continues as aggressively as possible . The second knight joins the attack . Blacks opening strategy was successful . Black starts a combination leading to material gain . The inconspicuous knight on h2 will single-handedly wreak havoc in Whites position . A good try to molest the black king with a knight sacrifice . Black , though , has a spectacular counterpunch : The threat is Qc5+ , forcing Qc6 and the subsequent loss of a knight as Black would get mated otherwise . This queen sacrifice starts the very effective deployment of the knight . Black wins material . Asquiesces the discovered check but other king moves were even worse : Ke2-e1/e3 and Nd4-c2+ wins the queen . Black reaps the fruit of his combinatorial fireworks : the smoke has cleared and he is two pawns ahead . This pawn breakthrough decides the game . The rest for completeness sake : Personal . Luther has a congenital disability ( dysmelia ) on his arms . As a child he was considered to have no perspective in sports from GDR officials . He tells to have taken a great amount of energy out of experiencing that he can be as good as others . Thomas Luther is author at ChessBase . He published various DVDs on opening theory and other topics . He is considered to be one of the leading experts on the French Defence , about which he published several times . In 2009 he finished his studies at the University of Hagen acquiring the title of Diplomkaufmann ( German equivalent to Master of Business Administration ) . Luthers current Elo rating is 2528 ( June 2020 ) .