Reports | November 05, 2012 19:28

Areshchenko wins strong Chigorin Memorial on tie-break

Alexander Areshchenko (Ukraine)

By beating Aleksandr Lenderman (USA) in a tough fight in Sunday's final round, Alexander Areshchenko (Ukraine) emerged as the winner of the Chigorin Memorial, a strong open tournament held in St. Petersburg. Areshchenko edget out Bartosz Socko (Poland) on tie-break after the two grandmasters finished on shared first place with 7.5/9.

Alexander Areshchenko (Ukraine) | Photo courtesy of the Russian Chess Federation

Event Chigorin Memorial | PGN | via TWIC
Dates October 27th-November 4th, 2012
Location St Petersburg, Russia
System Open (Swiss)
Players Shirov, Areshchenko, Almasi, Akopian, Vitiugov, Eljanov, Sasikiran, Zvjaginsev, Grachev and Matlakov formed the top 10
Rate of play

90 minutes for 40 moves followed by 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move 1

 

About 350 chess fans gathered in St Petersburg's Hotel Park last week, where a well organized Chigorin Memorial took place between October 27th and November 4th. It was one of the strongest Swiss events of 2012, with no less than 63 grandmasters and more than 100 titled players in total. The tournament was part of the "Russia Cup" series.

After four rounds, four players still had a 100% score: GM Robert Hovhannisyan of Armenia and Russians IM Anton Demchenko, GM Aleksandr Shimanov and GM Vladimir Epishin. The odd name there was Demchenko of course, but he duly won again in round 5:

PGN string

Shimanov also won his game, and in the next round he drew with Demchenko. After the sixth round these two were still leading but by then Ilya Smirin and Alexander Areshchenko had caught them in first place.

During the 7th round a strange incident occurred. Chess-news reports that after the start of the round GM Vladimir Epishin asked the arbiters whether he could check his e-mail. Obviously this was not possible, but four hours later Epishin could be found behind one of the laptops anyway, while his game was still in progress. His opponent, Bogdan Belyakov, complained with the arbiters, who declared the game as lost for Epishin. (By then his position was lost anyway.)

For top seed Alexei Shirov, the crucial game was played in round 8.

One should definitely have a special talent for turning down a winning endgame into a lost one,

he said in an interview. The Latvian still had about 6 minutes on the clock when the following happened.

PGN string

With one round to go no less than eight players were in shared first place with 6.5 points:

Rk.   Name FED Rtg Pts. TB1 TB2 TB3
1 GM Shimanov Aleksandr RUS 2599 6.5 45.0 34.0 33.0
2 GM Smirin Ilia ISR 2638 6.5 44.5 34.0 32.0
3 IM Demchenko Anton RUS 2610 6.5 43.5 33.5 33.0
4 GM Areshchenko Alexander UKR 2710 6.5 40.5 31.5 30.5
5 GM Socko Bartosz POL 2619 6.5 40.0 29.5 29.5
6 GM Eljanov Pavel UKR 2681 6.5 39.5 30.0 27.0
7 GM Lenderman Aleksandr USA 2614 6.5 38.5 29.0 27.5
8 GM Grachev Boris RUS 2672 6.5 38.0 29.0 28.5

Only Areshchenko and Socko managed to win their last round games, and so they moved up, with the Ukrainian finishing with a better tie-break. In the last round he won a marathon game:

PGN string

In another game from the final round, White's king played an important role:

PGN string

Areshchenko is having an excellent year so far. He also won the Botvinnik Memorial in St. Petersburg on tie-break early September, after finishing second at the Ukrainian Championship in August.

Chigorin Memorial 2012 | Final standings (top 40)

Rk Name Ti FED Rtg Pts TB1 TB2 TB3
1 Areshchenko Alexander GM UKR 2710 7.5 52.0 41.0 38.0
2 Socko Bartosz GM POL 2619 7.5 52.0 39.5 37.0
3 Shimanov Aleksandr GM RUS 2599 7.0 56.0 44.0 40.0
4 Demchenko Anton IM RUS 2610 7.0 55.5 44.0 40.0
5 Jumabayev Rinat GM KAZ 2545 7.0 55.0 43.0 36.5
6 Bartel Mateusz GM POL 2635 7.0 51.0 40.0 35.5
7 Eljanov Pavel GM UKR 2681 7.0 51.0 39.5 34.0
8 Grachev Boris GM RUS 2672 7.0 50.0 39.0 35.5
9 Sasikiran Krishnan GM IND 2680 7.0 50.0 39.0 34.5
10 Akopian Vladimir GM ARM 2703 7.0 49.0 40.0 35.0
11 Savchenko Boris GM RUS 2540 7.0 46.0 36.0 35.0
12 Smirin Ilia GM ISR 2638 6.5 56.0 44.0 38.5
13 Hovhannisyan Robert GM ARM 2610 6.5 53.5 41.5 37.0
14 Malakhatko Vadim GM BEL 2558 6.5 52.5 41.0 34.5
15 Negi Parimarjan GM IND 2657 6.5 51.5 41.0 36.0
16 Khismatullin Denis GM RUS 2638 6.5 51.5 40.0 35.0
17 Lenderman Aleksandr GM USA 2614 6.5 51.0 39.0 34.0
18 Timofeev Artyom GM RUS 2631 6.5 50.5 40.0 33.0
19 Swiercz Dariusz GM POL 2609 6.5 50.0 39.0 35.0
20 Shirov Alexei GM LAT 2718 6.5 49.5 39.0 33.5
21 Raznikov Danny IM ISR 2465 6.5 49.5 38.0 33.0
22 Lysyj Igor GM RUS 2628 6.5 49.0 38.0 32.0
23 Stukopin Andrey IM RUS 2494 6.5 48.5 38.0 31.5
24 Grigoriants Sergey GM RUS 2578 6.5 48.0 37.0 33.5
25 Burmakin Vladimir GM RUS 2579 6.5 47.5 37.5 31.5
26 Lintchevski Daniil GM RUS 2562 6.5 47.5 36.5 33.0
27 Shomoev Anton GM RUS 2571 6.5 47.0 36.5 32.0
28 Matlakov Maxim GM RUS 2665 6.5 46.0 35.5 30.5
29 Brodsky Michail GM UKR 2563 6.5 45.5 36.0 30.5
30 Gabrielian Artur GM RUS 2592 6.5 45.0 35.5 31.5
31 Onischuk Vladimir GM UKR 2558 6.5 44.0 34.5 32.5
32 Ajrapetjan Yuriy GM UKR 2502 6.5 40.5 32.0 29.5
33 Vitiugov Nikita GM RUS 2691 6.0 54.0 42.5 36.0
34 Kovalyov Anton GM ARG 2593 6.0 52.5 41.5 35.0
35 Stupak Kirill GM BLR 2520 6.0 52.0 40.5 33.5
36 Epishin Vladimir GM RUS 2574 6.0 50.5 39.5 34.5
37 Eliseev Urii IM RUS 2486 6.0 50.5 39.5 33.0
38 Hayrapetyan Hovik IM ARM 2450 6.0 50.0 40.0 32.0
39 Grigoryan Avetik GM ARM 2572 6.0 50.0 39.5 35.0
40 Popov Ivan GM RUS 2614 6.0 50.0 38.5 35.0

 

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Peter Doggers's picture
Author: Peter Doggers

Founder and editor-in-chief of ChessVibes.com, Peter is responsible for most of the chess news and tournament reports. Often visiting top events, he also provides photos and videos for the site. He's a 1.e4 player himself, likes Thai food and the Stones.

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Comments

Anonymous's picture

Anonymous

6 months 2 weeks ago

Congrats Boris

strana's picture

strana

6 months 2 weeks ago

Areschenko is another very strong player who never gets an invitation to play in a big West tournament.
Also interesting performance by Shimanov, who is very talented but, according to junior world champion, Ipatov, is not a very dedicated player.
Atention to Sergei Lobanov, a 11 year old who had an almost 2400 performance.

S3's picture

S3

6 months 2 weeks ago

Areschenko was this year 2nd in the Ukr. championship, undefeated with some pretty games. But I guess this is the first time he won something this big?

Jochem's picture

Jochem

6 months 2 weeks ago

Peter, in the last game, the text appears to say you want to show Areschenko's game (against Lenderman) or are the names wrong?

Thomas's picture

Thomas

6 months 2 weeks ago

The last game is indeed Savchenko-Vitiugov, Areshchenko played a marathon game of 102 moves against Lenderman.

As to whether Demchenko is the odd(est) name among the four leaders after round 4 - his rating is identical to Hovhannisyan's and higher than the ones of Shimanov and Epishin. But somehow he 'forgot' to become a GM and may be the highest-rated IM of the whole world - it seems that he plays only in Russia and mostly against Russians. Now he apparently got his final GM norm, with a TPR of 2746.
Not saying that Demchenko is quite as talented, but it's a bit reminiscent of FM Kramnik playing his first Olympiad, and FM Giri (shortly after moving from Russia to the Netherlands?) doing very well in Corus C 2009.

Peter Doggers's picture

Peter Doggers

6 months 2 weeks ago

Yeah something went wrong there; now corrected.

Thomas's picture

Thomas

6 months 2 weeks ago

Of course many more interesting games were played. I wrote stories about two of them (one from the preceding rapid event):
http://www.schach-welt.de/BLOG/Blog/PetersburgerRäuberschach
http://www.schach-welt.de/BLOG/Blog/RobertHovhannisyansGrossbauer
(in German with light and - as the titles already suggest - tongue in cheek annotations)

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