Alexander Ipatov won the World Junior Championsip on Wednesday in Athens, Greece. The 19-year-old Ukrainian-born grandmaster, who plays for Turkey, edged out Hungarian GM Richard Rapport on tie-break after both finished on 10/13. In the girls' section the title went to Chinese WGM Guo Qi. She had the best tie-break in a group of four that scored 9.5/13, besides WGM Nastassia Ziaziulkina, IM Anastasia Bodnaruk and WFM Aulia Medina Warda.

Alexander Ipatov & Guo Qi | Photos by Anastasia Karlovich & Andreas Kontokanis

The World Junior Championship was held August 2-15 at the Titania Hotel in Athens, Greece. 130 players in the Open section and 66 in the Girls section played a 13-round Swiss - a pretty tough event, as always, with only one rest day.

As the top grandmasters are getting younger and younger these days, and many teenagers are playing in the strongest tournaments, the World Juniors isn't as strong as it used to be. For instance, in the Open section only three players from the world's juniors top 10 were present: Chinese GMs Ding Liren and Yu Yangyi, and Yaroslav Zherebukh of Ukraine. The seven who were missing were Fabiano Caruana, Anish Giri, Parimarjan Negi, Wesley So, Sanan Sjugirov, Eltaj Safarli and Ilya Nyzhnyk. In the Girls' section things were less dramatic, but unsurprisingly World Champion Hou Yifan saw no reason to participate.

Even without the presence of many top players of his generation, Alexander Ipatov's achievement was excellent of course. Besides the gold medal he won a spot in the World Cup in 2013 in Tromsø, Norway, and finds himself in the list of previous winners that includes Viswanathan Anand, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Levon Aronian. Last but not least, Ipatov gained 24.4 Elo points to cross the 2600 mark.

A remarkable fact about Ipatov is that, at 19, he has already played for three different federations. Born in Ukraine, he switched federations to Spain in 2009, disappointed by the Ukranian Chess Federation's efforts to stimulate his career. Early 2012 he switched once more and started playing for the Turkey, where the federation made him an attractive offer. Ipatov will have plenty of opportunity to get more experience at the Olympiad, where he'll play first board for this country.

Ipatov's trainer, Efstratios Grivas, was so enthusiastic about his pupil's success that he distributed a PDF document to chess media with the news, including a biography and some games with annotations. We give Grivas' annotations here:

PGN file

Richard Rapport finished on the same score as Ipatov but had a worse tie-break. However, the Hungarian's achievement was arguably even better, considering the fact that he's three years younger! Here's a nice win by the runner-up.

PGN string.

Many norms were scored at the event. We'll mention three GM norms, by IMs K. Grigoryan (Armenia), S. Grover (India) and D. Debashis (India).

World Junior Championship 2012 | Final standings (top 30)

In the Girls' section Guo Qi was in sole lead after 12 rounds. A draw in the final round allowed three players to catch her in first place, but the 17-year-old Chinese won anyway, having the best tie-break. Here's her game from the penultimate round.

PGN string

World Junior Championship Girls 2012 | Final standings (top 30)

Source: Chess-Results