Russian Champion Evgeny Alekseev continued his hot streak by taking clear first at the Aeroflot Open. He beat Aronian's longtime second Sargissian in the final round. His impressive 7/9 nets him $30,000 and a spot in this year's Dortmund supertournament in June. The near-junior (I believe he turns 22 this year, or may have already) will face Kramnik, Anand, Carlsen, Gelfand, Leko, Mamedyarov, and Naiditsch from June 23 - July 01.
China made quite move toward the podium in the final round with wins by Ni Hua and Wang Yue. Further down, everyone's favorite, 12-year-old Hou Yifan, beat Kotronias to finish with 3.5.
Hou Yifan may be everybody's favorite but the girl who did better was Dronavalli Harika - playing 9 2600 GMs she scored 4/9. I wonder whether she got a GM norm for her efforts.
Sutovsky recovered quite well from his 2nd Round defeat by Hou. He finished with 6.0/9; she finished with 3.5/9. If Sutovsky would stop trying to achieve the next Immortal Game each round, I suspect that he would zoom past 2700, maybe into the Top 5. He's every bit as creative a tactician as Shirov. It would be nice to see a collection of his best games get published.
The result by the Chinese men is no surprise, given the Silver medals that China earned at the Chess Olympiad, and World Team Championships. Interesting to note that they fared much better than the higher rated Indians, Sasikaran and Harikrishna. Dreev and Bologan had forgetable results.
Nice result by Alekseev, although my bold prediction is that he finishes next to last in Dortmund.
Its interesting to see what a big difference having 1 more white than black. The top 9 finishers in the A1 group all had one extra white. No player with more blacks finished better than +2. It certainly justifies using the differential as the first tiebreak.
The tiebreak for second between Tomashevsky and Jakovenko was interesting too. Since they both had 5 whites, the tiebreak was average of opponents rating, discarding the high and low. The total of Tomashevky's opponents was 18210 while Jakovenko's was 18209.
Alekseev also only played 4 games against top 20 finishers. Tomashevsky played 6 games against the same field.
Novikov played all 5 top finishers, scoring 2-3. He's one to watch.
What is the result and performance of the young Ukrainian boy playing with his teddy bear in Aeroflot B ? (don't ask me to write his name...)
Yes, Dronavalli Harika had a great result. Also she is only 15 or 16 years old. So she must also be another one of the young female talents to watch.
5.5/9, 2431
Like if we didn't have enough scandals in chess...
The live transmission of the Stan Novikov's games was stopped after a group of GMs complained. It turned out that most of the Novikov's moves exactly matched the first line of Fritz. Also his time management was extremely strange for a human player- 2-3 minute per move (never more or less than that!).
After the live transmission was stopped, S.Novikov
scored .5 out of 3 remaining games. Go figure...
Like if we didn't have enough scandals in chess...
After the live transmission was stopped, S.Novikov
scored .5 out of 3 remaining games.
_______________
Apparently, we DON'T have enough scandals. Actually, if Stan Novikov were to cheat and get away with it, thar wuld in some ways be more impressive than "merely" winning to tournament--at least as a technical feat.
Novikov was outrated in all three of his final games, so his losses are not really unexpected.
“… zhorik
… … … Its interesting to see what a big difference having 1 more white than black. The top 9 finishers in the A1 group all had one extra white. No player with more blacks finished better than +2. It certainly justifies using the differential as the first tiebreak. … … … “
It would be interesting for players to have 2 ratings -- one for black and one for white. And then a combined overall rating.
Too bad Hou Yi Fan didnt win the game against Petrosian. The computers say she is winning. Of course she is but is there a draw. Seems like some endgame work on her part will get her to GM in no time.
I visited this page first time and found it Very Good Job of acknowledgment and a marvelous source of info.........Thanks Admin! http://www.reverse-phone-look-up.net