| Francisco Vallejo Pons | |
|---|---|
 Vallejo in 2013 | |
| Country | Spain |
| Born | 21 August 1982 Es Castell, Menorca, Spain |
| Title | Grandmaster (1999) |
| FIDE rating | 2653 (January 2024) |
| Peak rating | 2724 (July 2011) |
| Ranking | No. 84 (January 2024) |
| Peak ranking | No. 18 (January 2005) |
Francisco Vallejo Pons (born 21 August 1982) is a Spanish chess grandmaster. He is a five-time Spanish Chess Champion.
He achieved the Grandmaster title at the age of 16 years and 9 months.[1] He won the under-18 World Chess Youth Championship in 2000.
He won the Ciudad de Leon Masters after defeating Veselin Topalov 3½–2½.[2]
In 2013 he tied for first at the European Individual Championship.[3]
On 25 February 2006 he defeated FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov in 56 moves with the black pieces at the SuperGM Linares-Morelia chess tournament.[4]
diagram 1
Position after 24.Bf2 |
diagram 2
Position after 34.exd5 |
diagram 3
Final position after 56... Kd8 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
After a painful loss in his penultimate round against Sergey Karjakin in the 2012 Bilbao Chess Masters Final, Vallejo announced his retirement from competitive chess.[5]
Since then he has made multiple appearances in tournaments, for instance in 2014 Bilbao Chess Masters, as well as competed in country leagues.
Vallejo participated in the Grand Prix cycle for 2017–18, after being active in 2016. Having played in the Sharjah and Moscow legs of the event, and finished in the bottom half of the field in both, he had no mathematical chance to qualify for the 2018 Candidates Tournament via the Grand Prix.
