Avrukh leads in Zurich, two rounds to go
At the Jubilee Open in Zurich the situation at the top of the standings is getting very tense, with two more rounds to go. Only Boris Avrukh from Israel managed to collect 6 points out of 7 rounds, and he's chased by 11 GMs with half a point less, including Alexander Morozevich.
The Zurich Jubilee Open takes place August 9-15 in the Kongresshaus Zürich and is part of the activities of the 200-year anniversary celebrations of the Schachgesellschaft Zürich. A total of 536 players are trying their luck and the top group, called Alois Nagler Memorial, has 45 grandmasters and 48 International Masters competing for CHF 75,000 in prize money offered by the Alois Nagler Foundation.
We're talking about one of the strongest opens of 2009 with no-one less than Alexander Morozevich as top seed, and normally we'd have covered it earlier, but with so many tournaments going on at the same time, it's hard to keep track.
In round 4 Morozevich drew with Geetha while the 15-year-old Chinese super-talent Hou Yifan lost to IM Agopov. GMs Dreev and Areshchenko were the only ones to win their first four games, and drew in 9 moves in round 5, allowing Golod, Sandipan and Geetha to join them in the lead.
After round 6 there were no less than 12 GMs on shared first place with 5.0/6. This group was led by Alexander Morozevich, who had beaten Chanda Sandipan in a fantastic, tactical slugfest followed by a rook ending. The game was clearly one of the highlights of the Jubilee so far.
Yesterday's round saw many draws on the top boards but Avrukh beat Jovanovic with Black to take sole lead with two more rounds to go. At the moment of writing round 8 is being played, in which Sandipan and Dreev took a quick draw on board 3.
Selection of interesting games
Game viewer by ChessTempo
Alexander Morozevich, top seed in a strong open this time
Pentala Harikrishna from India
Russian GM Alexei Dreev
Gopal Geetha Narayanan, compatriot of Pentala
Hungarian Lajos Portisch, still playing every now and then
Hou Yifan from China
Brimming with experience: Artur Jussupow...
...with daughter Ekaterina also playing
Robert Hess (USA)
Local hero Yannick Pelletier
Anish Giri from Russia, but living in and playing for The Netherlands
Daniel Fridman, who won the blitz tournament yesterday
Potential future world champions meeting for a blitz game: Hou Yifan vs Anish Giri
All photos courtesy of the tournament website
Links
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
Thomas
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
Hi Peter,
With so many games to choose from, maybe you can indicate the game number(s) in the report - e.g. "Sandipan-Morozevich (game 123)". It would help to find particular highlights more quickly, thanks.
Jan
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
The game by Moro is best of 2009! Lc5!!! incredible move.
Felix
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
Thomas, I fully agree. In previous tournaments Chessvibes did quite a good job in selecting interesting games, otherwise there is no point inadding those games to the news.
Felix
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
Much better, Peter :) Although 30 selected games is still quite a lot, maybe sorting them by first giving the games mentioned in the article and then the other games may be an idea for the future.
red-white-chess
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
chanda vs morozevich is fantastic game. round 8 also see tigran g vs morozevich again won by black in sicilian. many interesing games like moor vs robert hess, dreev vs portisch, gm bosiocic vs hou yifan.
Peter Doggers
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
Agree, but sometimes I just lack the time. In the meantime I updated the article and now there's a selection of games.
Thomas
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
Actually I had no problem with showing _all_ games (as in the first version of the report), so it seems that Peter slightly misunderstood my comment. I merely suggested to make it easier for us "end users" to find the most interesting games in the list. One way is mentioning the 'list number' of the game in the report. Another way might be to highlight your "top 31" by putting the players' names in bold and/or a different color in the comprehensive list. Is this technically possible? This is probably a question to Chess Tempo rather than Peter Doggers.
I am also curious how you found your "top 31" in the first place. Did you really play through or at least scan ALL games (more than 150 as far as I remember)? This is indeed time-consuming, also taking into account that you cover two other events (FIDE GP and Staunton Memorial) at the same time. Or did you give priority to games by the strongest GMs? Including all games by Moro is a logical start.
But in that case you/we may now miss some interesting stuff on the lower boards - players rated ~2200 or ~2000 (your and my level :) ) may also play nice games!? I wonder if engines or database-type searches could be helpful. Maybe they could quickly locate games with piece sacrifices or unusual material imbalances?
Peter Doggers
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
A combination of the two - I replayed, say, the top 10-15 games of every round. Morozevich's games were all included without thinking for a second. :-)
Peter Doggers
2 years 9 months ago
Permalink
@Felix lol
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