Arturs Neikšāns
Arturs Neiksans (, born 16 March 1983) is a Latvian chess player who has held the FIDE title of Grandmaster since 2012. He is a four-time Latvian champion, one of the leading Latvian chess players, an FIDE-accredited chess trainer, author and a commentator of high-level chess tournaments. Biography. Born in Valka (a small Latvian bordertown with Estonia), Neiksans started to play chess relatively late for an eventual grandmaster, being 9 years old upon learning the game. At age 16, he received the title of a national master, and at age 18 has was ranked as an  international master. In 1999, being only 16 years old, Neiksans won the Latvian Chess Championship, thus becoming the youngest-ever Latvian champion. He beat Mikhail Tal's record, which was set in 1953, by several months. After graduating from high school, Neiksans essentially left competitive chess, pursuing a different career instead, and after receiving an MBA Master's degree in Public Relations, he mostly worked in the field of communications, most notably the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science, and later also at the newspaper "Jelgavas Vestnesis". At age 27, there was a sudden change of career trajectory, as in  the autumn of 2010 he was offered the position of head chess coach in the Riga Chess School. He continued the interrupted work of the legendary Latvian grandmaster Janis Klovans, who had just died at the age of 75. Every day, Neiksans, who was still an IM at the time, would work on his chess. He needed slightly more than one year to get all of the required three grandmaster norms, thus getting the coveted title at the age of 28, which for professional chess players is considered to be quite late. In 2012, he received the FIDE trainer's  title as well, and in 2016 his ELO rating peaked at 2631. Coaching. From 2010 to 2021, Arturs Neiksans was the head coach at Riga Chess School, on a daily basis working with the most talented Latvian youngsters, among them Nikita Meshkovs, Toms Kantans, Laura Rogule, Katrina Amerika (Skinke), Elizabete Limanovska, Dmitrijs Tokranovs and others. Many of them later would become grandmasters themselves and the core of the Latvian national team. He left the job in late October of 2021 just before the start of FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. Neiksans still does coaching, providing private lessons. Author. In 2018, Neiksans  started a collaboration with one of the leading online chess education portals "Modern Chess", producing four popular theoretical databases: In late July of 2021, Chessable published the first lesson course by Neiksans: "Lifetime Repertoires – Reversed Sicilian", proving a complete repertoire for Black against English opening. Commentary and streaming. In parallel to other activities, Neiksans has also become a chess commentator for high-level international tournaments, both in English and Russian languages: Since April 2020, Arturs Neiksans has also become a streamer on Twitch, regularly streaming several times a week.