Reports | February 17, 2012 10:20

Karjakin wins Aeroflot Blitz

Karjakin wins Aeroflot Blitz

Sergey Karjakin won the Aeroflot Blitz tournament in his hometown Moscow, Russia. The Russian grandmaster finished on 15/18 in this double nine round event, half a point more than former blitz world champion Alexander Grischuk.

Moscovite Sergei Karjakin wins the Aeroflot Blitz | All photos in this report © Moscow Chess, more here

Event Aeroflot Blitz
Dates February 16th, 2012
Location Moscow, Russia
System 9-round Swiss, two games per round
Players Top players included Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Morozevich, Peter Svidler and Alexander Grischuk 
Rate of play 3 minutes for the game, with an additional 2 second increment
Prize fund 25,000 euro

Hotel Cosmos, the venue of the Aeroflot Chess Festival

Traditionally, one day after the Aeroflot Open's last round, the chess festival finishes with a blitz tournament. And a very strong blitz tournament, we may add! This time there were no less than 117 grandmasters, among them Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Morozevich, Peter Svidler, Alexander Grischuk, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Baadur Jobava, Dmitry Jakovenko, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Le Quang Liem, Krishnan Sasikiran and Vallejo Pons.

A terribly strong blitz tournament attracts spectators like a magnet

Top seed Karjakin went off to a great start, scoring 2-0 against Bayarsaikhan Gundavaa, Alojzije Jankovic, Vasily Papin and Dmitry Andreikin. Then Dmitry Jakovenko held him to 1-1, but Maxim Dlugy, the retired American GM who lives in Moscow, also lost 2-0. Karjakin then also defeated Baadur Jobava (1.5.-0.5), the match which Karjakin considered to be the most difficult. The crucial match with Alexander Grischuk in the penultimate round ended in 1-1. In the final round, a 1.5-0.5 victory over Alexei Dreev was enough for Karjakin to finish just half a point ahead of Grischuk, reaching 15 points in total.

Unfortunately the games weren't saved digitally, so you really had to be there to enjoy the spectacle. One of the many spectators at the tournament was 12th World Champion Anatoly Karpov. As a member of the State Duma he is more busy than ever, but he still enjoys watching chess wherever he can.

Arbiter (of the main tournament) Geurt Gijssen, Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Bakh, Anatoly Karpov
giving a speech, and behind him the arbiter of the blitz tournament Andrzej Filipowicz

With these 18 games of blitz, Karjakin won € 7,000 euro - not a bad day at the office! Grischuk took home € 4,000. The total prize fund was € 25,000, as always sponsored by Aeroflot Airlines.

As we understand, this tournament will be calculated for the FIDE blitz ratings - the first list will appear July 1st, 2012. At the moment, Karjakin must be number one in the "live ratings"!

Aeroflot Blitz 2012 | Round 9 (final) standings (top 50)

Place Title Name   Fed. FIDE Total MBch. Bch. Wins
1 GM Karjakin, Sergey   RUS 2769 15.0 81.50 104.50 7
2 GM Grischuk, Alexander   RUS 2761 14.5 75.00 93.00 7
3 GM Yu, Yangyi   CHN 2631 13.5 72.50 91.50 6
4 GM Popov, Ivan   RUS 2599 13.5 68.50 87.00 6
5 GM Shimanov, Aleksandr   RUS 2549 13.0 81.00 100.00 6
6 GM Jumabayev, Rinat   KAZ 2573 13.0 69.50 87.00 6
7 GM Dreev, Aleksey   RUS 2698 12.5 81.50 105.50 6
8 GM Andreikin, Dmitry   RUS 2688 12.5 80.50 104.50 5
9 GM Tomashevsky, Evgeny   RUS 2740 12.5 73.50 94.50 5
10 GM Caruana, Fabiano   ITA 2736 12.5 72.50 93.00 4
11 GM Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar   AZE 2747 12.0 81.50 104.50 4
12 GM Jobava, Baadur   GEO 2704 12.0 80.00 102.50 6
13 GM Bosiocic, Marin   CRO 2580 12.0 78.50 99.50 4
13 GM Dlugy, Maxim   USA 2518 12.0 78.50 99.50 4
15 GM Zhigalko, Sergei   BLR 2658 12.0 73.50 92.50 6
16 GM Gupta, Abhijeet   IND 2652 12.0 73.00 93.50 5
17 GM Sjugirov, Sanan   RUS 2622 12.0 72.00 92.00 6
18 GM Gopal G.N.   IND 2566 12.0 71.50 93.00 5
19 GM Korobov, Anton   UKR 2660 12.0 71.50 91.00 3
20 GM Mamedov, Rauf   AZE 2636 12.0 69.00 88.50 4
21 GM Bukavshin, Ivan   RUS 2517 12.0 68.00 87.00 5
22 GM Wen, Yang   CHN 2543 12.0 67.50 86.00 5
23 GM Papin, Vasily   RUS 2570 12.0 64.50 84.00 6
24 GM Jakovenko, Dmitry   RUS 2729 11.5 77.00 100.00 4
25 GM Lu, Shanglei   CHN 2516 11.5 74.00 95.00 4
26 GM Ipatov, Alexander   TUR 2586 11.5 71.00 91.00 3
27 GM Svidler, Peter   RUS 2749 11.5 70.50 91.00 3
28 GM Nepomniachtchi, Ian   RUS 2735 11.5 68.50 90.50 5
29 GM Rodshtein, Maxim   ISR 2634 11.5 60.50 77.00 3
30 GM Grigoriants, Sergey   RUS 2570 11.0 74.00 94.50 4
31 GM Eljanov, Pavel   UKR 2690 11.0 74.00 91.50 4
32 GM Bu, Xiangzhi   CHN 2670 11.0 73.50 96.00 6
33 GM Robson, Ray   USA 2596 11.0 71.50 91.50 3
34 GM Alekseev, Evgeny   RUS 2670 11.0 71.50 90.50 5
35 GM Le, Quang Liem   VIE 2714 11.0 69.50 88.00 3
36 FM Artemiev, Vladislav   RUS 2439 11.0 69.00 86.50 4
37 GM Dubov, Daniil   RUS 2498 11.0 68.50 87.00 3
38   Swayams, Mishra   IND 2386 11.0 67.00 84.50 5
39 GM Melkumyan, Hrant   ARM 2620 11.0 66.00 85.00 5
40 GM Gajewski, Grzegorz   POL 2616 11.0 65.50 85.00 4
41 GM Iturrizaga, Eduardo   VEN 2649 11.0 64.50 85.00 4
42 GM Morozevich, Alexander   RUS 2763 11.0 64.50 82.50 5
43 GM Balogh, Csaba   HUN 2665 10.5 76.00 97.00 4
44 IM Mozharov, Mikhail   RUS 2478 10.5 73.50 94.50 4
45 GM Kobalia, Mikhail   RUS 2673 10.5 72.50 93.00 3
46 FM Nakhapetiane, Pogos   RUS 2511 10.5 71.50 89.00 3
47 IM Grigoryan, Karen H.   ARM 2482 10.5 71.00 88.00 5
48 GM Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter   ROU 2647 10.5 69.00 91.00 4
49 GM Minasian, Artashes   ARM 2525 10.5 69.00 89.00 4
50 GM Dobrov, Vladimir   RUS 2496 10.5 67.00 82.00 3

 

Tags:

Share |
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.

Chess Master School

Comments

Zeblakob's picture

Zeblakob

1 year 4 months ago

"....Unfortunately the games weren't saved digitally,.."
Of course, a digital board costs about $800.

Thomas's picture

Thomas

1 year 4 months ago

Well, but they had these digital boards for the main Aeroflot event - so apparently they couldn't handle the blitz games ...

pat j's picture

pat j

1 year 4 months ago

congrats to karjakin! he seems like a super nice guy and could possibly fight for the crown one day!

RuralRob's picture

RuralRob

1 year 4 months ago

This tournament was described as a "qualifier" in previous articles, but what is it a qualifier for? And how many of the top finishers qualified?

KingTal's picture

KingTal

1 year 4 months ago

The World Blitz Championship 2012 after the Tal memorial?

S3's picture

S3

1 year 4 months ago

Tal memorial and the previously accompanying blitz event are now seperated events, I believe.

Thomas's picture

Thomas

1 year 4 months ago

Yep (so it seems): The FIDE tournament calendar includes the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan (no dates given!!??). I vaguely remember reading that Aeroflot blitz was a qualifier for this event, but cannot find it back.

The World Blitz Ch was already held in Kazakhstan (then in Almaty) in 2008, with a different field than Tal Memorial blitzes including continental qualifiers - one of them, Dominguez, ended up winning. In that year, Tal Memorial Blitz was just a strong event but not a world championship.

Kamalakanta Nieves's picture

Kamalakanta Nieves

1 year 4 months ago

I love it that in Russia, the fans are just a few feet from the board. It feels like an old fashioned chess club...just a bunch of chess lovers sharing the game.

Kamalakanta Nieves's picture

Kamalakanta Nieves

1 year 4 months ago

Any videos of this tournament coming up? I see a video camera in the first photo!

LuxusOhr's picture

LuxusOhr

1 year 4 months ago

There are great recordings by EugenePotemkin on Youtube.

sadtruth's picture

sadtruth

1 year 4 months ago

And Sergey Sorokhtin

Anders's picture

Anders

1 year 4 months ago

http://www.youtube.com/user/EugenePotemkin/videos?sort=dd&view=u

Sergey Sorokhtin's picture

Sergey Sorokhtin

1 year 3 months ago

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA8DC27D7D13936C6&feature=mh_lolz
35 chess blitz video from aeroflot open 2012

Your comment

By posting a comment you are agreeing to abide our Terms & Conditions

Latest articles