Alexander Anatolyevich Motylev (Russian: Александр Анатольевич Мотылёв; born 17 June 1979) is a Russian chessgrandmaster. He was Russian champion in 2001 and European champion in 2014.
Career
He learnt how to play at the age of four and a half years and at age six took part in group instruction sessions. Motylev became a Candidate Master at eleven years old.[2] Around this time, he was also gifted at football, a sport for which he had major aspirations. Made aware of his split loyalties by his chess coach, Motylev's physical education teacher advised him to concentrate on chess and this proved to be good advice, as he went on to become national junior champion at both under 16 and under 18 level.[2][3]
In 2004, Motylev won the Tomsk qualifier[6] and in the Superfinal of the 57th Russian Championship he finished fourth, behind Garry Kasparov, with whom Motylev drew, Alexander Grischuk and Alexey Dreev.[7]
In 2005, he tied for first in the Aeroflot Open.[8] Later that year, Motylev finished second at the 2nd Sanjin Hotel Cup, behind Pentala Harikrishna, whom he defeated, and qualified again for the Russian Superfinal, this time by finishing equal third in Kazan.[9]
He placed equal first (second on tiebreak) in the 2015 Russian Championship Higher League with 6.5/9 and qualified for the Superfinal.[15] In the latter he scored 4/11, tying for 11th-12th place with Ildar Khairullin and placing last on tiebreak.[16] In 2017 Motylev won the Russian Rapid Chess Championship in Sochi.[17] In August 2022 in Barcelona he reached second place at the 23rd Sants Open, scoring 7.5/10.[18]
Motylev switched to the Romanian Chess Federation in June 2023[1] and is currently working as Technical Director of Romanian National Teams.