Julio Granda

Who is Julio Granda?

Julio Ernesto Granda Zúñiga is a Peruvian chess Grandmaster.

In his coastal town, he learned how to play chess at the age of five. By the age of 19, Granda had obtained the title of Grandmaster by the FIDE, the World Chess Federation, after surpassing the chess rating of 2500. He finished 1st with Bent Larsen at Mar del Plata 1993. He is a five-time chess champion of Peru, winning in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 2002. Granda won the 4th American Continental Championship at Cali 2007 on tie-break between the five first place finishers at 8/11. This victory qualified him for the Chess World Cup 2007 where he lost his first round match to Arkadij Naiditsch ½–1½. In December 2009, he tied for 1st–4th with Georg Meier, Viktor Láznička and Kiril Georgiev in the 19th Magistral Pamplona Tournament. In 2010, he won the 5th Torneo Abierto in Guadalajara. In 2011 he tied for 2nd–7th with Aleksander Delchev, Ivan Šarić, Pablo Almagro Llamas, Maxim Turov and Mihail Marin the 31st Villa de Benasque Open. In the Chess World Cup 2013 in Norway, Granda has reached round four, after knocking out Leif Erlend Johannessen, Peter Leko and Anish Giri.

Julio Granda played for Peru in the Chess Olympiads of 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2010.