Timur Gareyev
Timur Gareyev (sometimes spelled "Gareev"; born March 3, 1988) is an Uzbeki-American chess grandmaster. He was born in Tashkent to Tatar parents. Gareyev was a part of the University of Texas at Brownsville's chess team from August 2005 to August 2006 and from August 2009 to December 2011 where he helped the university obtain its first national championship along with other collegiate honors. In 2007, he tied for first with Vladimir Egin and Anton Filippov in the Uzbekistani Chess Championship. Gareyev has participated in two Chess Olympiads: 2004 Calvià, Spain and 2006 Turin, Italy. Gareyev won  the 20th Annual Chicago Open and the 11th Metropolitan Chess FIDE Invitational tournament. Gareyev graduated with B.A. degree in Business Marketing from the University of Texas at Brownsville. He lived and promoted chess in Southern California but now lives in Kansas. Gareyev won the North American Open 2012 and tied for third in the U.S. Chess Championship 2013. He won the U.S. Open with an 8-1 clear-first-place score in 2018. Gareyev's simultaneous blindfold chess record includes a 19-game blindfold simul in Cypress, Texas, September 2012, a 27-game (set in stages) simul in Hawaii Dec  2012, a 33-game (set in stages) match in St Louis, May 2013 and a world record 48-board simul in Las Vegas, on December 4, 2016. Gareyev's win in the 2018 US Open qualified him for a place in the 2019 U.S. Chess Championship, where he finished in a three-way tie for 9th place out of a field of 12. In 2020, Gareyev won first place in the 27th annual Western Class Championship tied with John Daniel Bryant. Gareyev is also a skydiver with close to 150 solo jumps. When Gareyev won the 119th edition of the  U.S. Open, "Chess Life" magazine published his sky-diving photo with a chess board as a cover.