Joël Lautier () is a French chess grandmaster and one of the world's leading chess players in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1986, He won U-14 World Youth Chess Championship in Puerto Rico, Argentina. In 1988, he won the World Junior Chess Championship, ahead of stars such as Vasily Ivanchuk, Boris Gelfand and Gregory Serper. He is the youngest player ever to win the World Junior Championship at the age of 15. He is one of the few players who has a lifetime positive score against Garry Kasparov. He was one of the people instrumental in Kramnik winning the Classical World Chess Championship 2000 against Kasparov by preparing the infamous 'Berlin Wall'. He also won the French Chess Championship twice in 2004 and 2005. He was the first president of the Association of Chess Professionals when it was founded in June 2003. In 2006, Lautier gave up competitive chess to pursue a career in investment banking. Since 2009 he has been CEO of the Moscow-based investment banking firm RGG Capital. Early life Joel Lautier was born in Ontario, Canada on April 12, 1973. His father was French and his mother was Japanese. Later on, the family moved to France. He started playing chess when he was three and a half years old. His father introduced him to the game of chess. His father was a pretty decent player – rated around 2200 who often gave him interesting puzzles and quizzes and kept him interested in the game. He progressed quite quickly due to this. When he was 11, he started to beat his father on a regular basis. He dropped out of school when he was 16 as he wanted to focus more on chess tournaments. Chess career Lautier won the Paris Championship for under-10 and then the under-10 French national title. In 1986, he participated in the U-14 World Championship in Puerto Rico, Argentina. Interestingly, his main competitors in that tournament were Sofia Polgar and Judit Polgar. He beat Sofia and drew against Judit. Eventually, he won the event with a good margin of 1.5 points, ahead of both the Polgar sisters. He worked with his father until he got his first world title in 1986, and then he trained with an IM named Didier Sellos. In 1988, at the age of 15, he won the World Junior Chess Championship in Adelaide, Australia. In this tournament, Joel was