Especially when a number of elite grandmasters come and play, it's nice to have a local winner and this is what happened at the Canadian Open, where GM Mark Bluvshtein and IM Edward Porper, both from Canada, finished shared first with a fine score of 7.5/9, ahead of Adams, Ni Hua, Shirov and other strong GMs. Bluvshtein was declared winner on tiebreak.

This year's Canadian Open took place July 11-19 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was one big group, with 203 participants, and clearly one of the strongest open Swisses in the calendar because among the participants were 2700+ players Alexei Shirov, Ni Hua and Michael Adams. Besides, many top Canadian players participated and eventually two of them finished at the top of the standings.

Rounds 5-9

From our previous report on the first five rounds we already know that that there wasn't a clear favorite in Edmonton this year. Besides, FM Theo Hommeles from the Netherlands and Canadian IM Edward Porper had started quite well, as both were sharing the lead with many GMs.

Hommeles can be satisfied with a a fine tournament in which he defeated IM Samsonkin (2612) and GM Ni Hua (2702), to find himself playing for first place against Mark Bluvshtein in the last round. However, the Dutchman lost this game and so he couldn't repeat what his compatriot Hans Ree had done back in 1971: finishing shared first at the Canadian Open in Vancouver (together with Boris Spassky). After learning about this success of his arch-enemy Ree, the famous Dutch writer Jan Hein Donner wrote an article titled “Does Canada exist?” :-) as was also pointed out by Rini Luyks in the comments.

Ni Hua (2701) vs Theo Hommeles (2412): 0-1!

Porper, on the other hand, managed to play an even better last half of the tournament: he drew with Shirov in round 6, then beat Mikhalevski in round 7, then drew with Adams and then the Canadian even beat Ganguly in the last round!

IM Edward Porper is already rated 2501 and played far stronger than that

Before the final round there was a 9-way tie between GM Mark Bluvshtein, GM Alexei Shirov, IM Edward Porper, GM Michael Adams, GM Surya Ganguly, GM Eugene Perelshteyn, IM Irina Krush, FM Jonathan Tayar and FM Theo Hommeles NED who were all on 6.5/8.

As mentioned before, Bluvshtein beat Hommeles and Porper beat Ganguly. The two finished shared first with 7.5/9 as top GMs Shirov and Adams were held to a draw by Perelshteyn and Krush respectively. According to the tournament website Mark Bluvshtein won on tiebreak.

GM Mark Bluvshtein (2598), proud winner of the Canadian Open 2009

You can replay all games here at the Monroi Tournament Website.

Photos & videos © Zeljka Malobabic of MonRoi, published with permission.

Links

• Monroi's tournament website
• Games in PGN