Vassily Ivanchuk won the ACP Golden Classic convincingly, finishing on +4 in the 7-round tournament. Anish Giri was in a class of his own at the Dutch Championship, scoring 6/7. The Women's Championship wasn't won, for a change, by Zhaoqin Peng but by Tea Lanchava. The SPA Open ended in a 2-way tie between IM Robert Hungaski and GM Alon Greenfeld.

Venue of four tournaments: the University of Amsterdam's Universum Sports Centre at Science Park, Amsterdam

Golden Classic

We left this tournament after the fifth round on Thursday. At that point there were still two rounds to play, and four games had been adjourned: Le Quang Liem-Muzychuk and Sutovsky-Sasikiran of round 4, and Sasikiran-Kamsky and Jobava-Le Quang Liem of round 5.

The Golden Classic (during round 7) | Photo SPAchess

In Friday's sixth round Emil Sutovsky, the creator of the tournament, scored his first win. He showed that even after the many exchanges, the weak square on d6 meant trouble for Jobava.

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Ivanchuk moved to +3 with a relatively easy win over Sasikiran. The Indian went for a tactical sequence which was just good for White.

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In a game that went a bit up and down, the position in Kamsky-Muzychuk was adjourned after move 41. This meant that on Saturday four adjourned games would be resumed. The attentive reader counted five, but in fact in Sasikiran-Kamsky of round 5, the Indian had quickly resigned after checking the position with the computer.

Sasikiran-Kamsky
Position after 41...Nc3
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In fact one could wonder if checking an engine was really necessary to evaluate this position as completely lost. :-)

And so on Saturday at 13:00, when the last round of the Dutch Championship and the penultimate round of the SPA Open started in the same venue, the positions of two games were waiting to be played on: the ones from Le Quang Liem-Muzychuk and Sutovsky-Sasikiran. The only player who was sitting at the board, however, was Sasikiran (who in fact had been under the impression that the whole thing started at 11:00).

Sasikiran arrived (very) early for the adjourned games session | Photo SPAchess

The other players arrived a few minutes late at the board, which led to further amusement because the arbiters weren't sure whether to start the clocks, or open the envelopes, or not!

As it turned out, one envelope showed that Anna Muzychuk had indeed exchanged rooks, which meant that while choosing the sealed move she had to evaluate a complicated pawn ending. In the hotel she only had to find the most accurate way to draw it, but Le quickly believed her.

Update: Because the position after 48.Rd2 was the one on the board for everyone to analyse (and the game as given by the organizers even says 'adjourned' after this move), we concluded that 48...Rxd2+ was Muzychuk's sealed move. However, as Thomas point out in the comments, in fact Le Quang Liem sealed the move 48.Rd2 "open for public" which means that Muzychuk could decide on 48...Rxd2+ based on home analysis.

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Kamsky watching the two resumed games

The other game was more eventful. In fact afterwards the players admitted that after only 3-5 moves of play into the adjournment session they had both left their home analysis already. What followed was a fascinating 2.5 hours of extra play!

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In the second adjournment session, Muzychuk and Kamsky agreed to a draw only few moves into their adjournment. Le Quang Liem defeated Jobava:

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As it turned out, Jobava did not analyse the adjourned position at all, "because the objective lines churned out by the computer would have disheartened him and inhibited him from trying out any single trick on the board", according to the tournament website. "Le Quang, to the contrary, had to carefully check every variation in order not to let the win slip away."

In the final round on Sunday Ivanchuk won quickly against Muzychuk to secure tournament victory.

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A fascinating game was the following. Afterwards Kamsky was analyzing the "ending" for a long time with spectators such as GM Jan Smeets, IM Robert Ris and GM Krishnan Sasikiran.

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And so Vassily Ivanchuk won the ACP Golden Classic very convincingly. The Ukrainian won five games and drew two, which resulted in a 2968 TPR. Interestingly, Ivanchuk was the only player who didn't need to resume an adjourned game!

Winner Vassily Ivanchuk received a new cap with the text "The city of Amsterdam" | Photo SPAchess

Emil Sutovsky told us that he was satisfied with the tournament.

Despite the longer time control of 2.5 hours for 40 moves obviously mistakes were made, but many games were very interesting.

Golden Classic 2012 | Final standings

Dutch Championships

Anish Giri won his third – and easiest – Dutch Championship, with five wins and two draws. Look how smooth he played the ending in the penultimate round.

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Here's an interview we did with Anish just after the last round:

Dutch Championship 2012 | Final standings

The Women's Championship only consisted of four players: GM Zhaoqin Peng, IM Tea Lanchava, WGM Anne Haast and Martine Middelburg. Everyone expected Peng to clinch her 14th (!) title but instead Lanchave won her first, scoring 4.5/6 which was half a point more than Peng.

Tea Lanchava wins her first Dutch title

SPA Open

The big open tournament, called SPAchess Open, was originally the main event. Later the Dutch Championship and the Golden Classic were added, in the same venue. The SPAchess Open was eventually won by American IM Robert Hungaski, who just edged out GM Alon Greenfeld on tiebreak. In the 8th round, Hungaski showed a lot of patience:

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One more player should be mentioned in this report: 2274 rated Dutchman Sjoerd Plukkel, who happens to be a former team member of the author of this report. He already played "Tata C" once, and in Amsterdam he confirmed his talent once more. After eight rounds Plukkel had already secured an IM norm with a score of 5.5 points and his opponent in the last round being GM Stewart Haslinger. But look what the underdog did to the GM:

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Plukkel finished with the highest TPR of all players, which was an even bigger achievement taken into account that Monday till Friday, in the mornings of rounds 3-7, he worked between 6 and 10 AM at his regular job, before taking the train to Amsterdam!

I was tired in rounds 6 and 7, so I lost on Thursday [against the eventual tournament winner - CV] and decided to just exchange everything on Friday [a draw against IM Li Riemersma - CV].

Sjoerd Plukkel, who also won 51 (!) rating points

SPA Open 2012 | Final standings (top 40)

An example of the wonderful atmosphere in Amsterdam: four strong GMs playing bughouse after finishing their tournament!