GM Julio Granda Zuniga

Julio somehow has an innate chess talent on a level with Capablanca.

He became a GM without any massive studying effort and to this day has barely opened a chess book. For several years he quit chess to work on his farm in Peru and when he came back to tournaments he nearly obtained a 2700 rating. 

No other GM has come from such humble origins to accomplish so much with such little preparation.

 

"Now 49 years old, Julio Granda Zuniga doesn't cease to amaze the chess world. After winning the Llucmajor open with 8.5/9, his virtual rating climbed to 2699, the highest in his career."
https://www.chess.com/news/view/granda-reaches-highest-elo-at-49-3210

did he play top board for Peru in olympiad?

He did not play in the 2016 Baku Olympiad, but even without him the Peruvian team did very well, finishing 10th, ahead of China!
With Julio playing they could have gone higher in the standings.

Yes I've heard of Him. Kindly post some of his games with annotation.

Here's his fantastic "Plan 9 from Outer Space" game with Yasser Seirawan!

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1052923

Maybe somebody could post it properly because I can't.

 

Thanks, shcherbak!

np,

The maestro defeating Anish Giri in 2013.

 

Interesting stuff Murakami, thanks.
His "Plan 9" game against Seirawan doesn't look like the play of a simple Peruvian farmer!
Amazing

I was fortunate enough to play him several times while living in Portugal . I played him twice in Portugal and once in Zafra Spain .  I drew one game and lost the other 2 .  Unfortunately I dont have the game scores as they were all raipid games so we werent keeping score .  

I think Julio compares very directly to Capablanca, another player with enormous talent, who won in spite of his lack of built-up theoretical knowledge.

Unlike Kasparov and Caruana, and similar to Magnus and Julio, Capablanca's openings didn't help him. He often had to overcome where he was left after the opening.

Capablanca doesn't get credit for how sharply he would play in the middlegame in order to get the victory over his more booked-up opponent.

He is playing on a team of the Madrilenian teams league. If our first team is able to promote to Honour Division, our first board would have the chance to play him.

Murakami, in a hypothetical match between Julio Granda and Capablanca, who would you favor?

And incidentally, I think Capablanca could play extremely dynamically when he wanted to, but it's true that wasn't his style against strong players, unlike the beast Alekhine. Capablanca wasn't lacking any understanding of dynamics, he just trusted in winning safely with his greater understanding.
Julio cannot win safely against opponents that are stronger than the ones Capa faced. It seems only Magnus can do that.

I've seen the theme of that early sac in a much earlier game, might have even been Bronstein with white, I just can't remember against who nor when, exactly. I'm a bit sceptical about the "I never studied chess" part. If you avoid usual and fashionable systems in the opening, well how do you know what is fashionable and what isn't, if you never read an opening book or encyclopedia? How would you know 1...c5 (against e4) is more fashionable than, say 1...g6 followed by c5

That is a good question, Sneakmaster. As Murakami said, Julio would be doing better with more study.

But he's been playing in tournaments from a very young age, and he's familiar with different players and what they're doing, as you can see from his opinions on Karpov, Kasparov, Ivanchuk, and Anand. And of course he knows the difference between a Sicilian and a Kings Indian.

He's looked at many hundreds of games I'm sure, but has never dwelled on the theory. He understands the game and can see chess ideas very rapidly, which is good enough without knowing exactly when he's leaving a theoretical line.

Murakami gave a good example where he ignorantly charged down a dubious line and still won.