Maxime Vachier-Lagrave — universally known as MVL — earned the Grandmaster title in 2005 at the age of fourteen, then one of the youngest GMs in the world. He has been France’s top-ranked player for nearly two decades and held world top-five status from 2015 to 2018.
His chess identity is defined by the Sicilian Najdorf: he has played it with Black almost exclusively for fifteen years at the highest level, and his theoretical contributions to the line — particularly in the Poisoned Pawn and English Attack — are part of the modern repertoire of every elite Najdorf specialist. His peak rating of 2819 in 2016 ranks among France’s all-time highest.
He tied for first place at the 2020 Candidates Tournament with Ian Nepomniachtchi, playing what was arguably the strongest individual performance of his career — though Nepomniachtchi won the right to challenge Carlsen on tiebreak count.
MVL won the FIDE World Blitz Championship in 2021, defeating Carlsen, Nakamura, and Caruana in the same event. He has been a fixture of the French national team at every Olympiad since 2006 and is the highest-rated French player in history by FIDE rating.