Nijat Abasov


Nijat Azad oglu Abasov is an Azerbaijani chess grandmaster. In February 2020, he reached his all-time-highest rating of 2670 and was ranked as No. 3 in Azerbaijan and No. 67 in the world.

Early years

Abasov was awarded the title of International Master in 2009. He gained his third and final norm required for the title of Grandmaster in the Azerbaijani Solidarity Day event in late December 2010, in which he placed first. FIDE awarded him the title in February 2011.

Professional career

In November 2015, Abasov won the Cultural Village tournament in Wijk aan Zee to qualify for the 2016 Tata Steel Challengers tournament. In this latter he scored 6½ points out of 13. Abasov played on team Azerbaijan 2 in the 42nd Chess Olympiad in Baku. In late December 2016, he won the Zurich Christmas Open on tiebreak from Viktor Láznička, Dennis Wagner, Christian Bauer and Mateusz Bartel. In 2017, Abasov won both the Azerbaijani Chess Championship and the Baku Open tournament.
In October 2019, Nijat earned 6.5 points in the FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament, finishing 15th out of 154 players. During the same month, he gained 23.8 rating points and reached his all-time highest rating of 2655. In November, Abasov climbed to #93 in the world rankings and entered FIDE Top 100 for the first time in his career. The next month in December, Abasov reached the rating of 2663 and was ranked as No. 82 in the world.