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Short wins in Romania

4 June 2008 10:21 AM CET | Last modified: 22:52 | By Peter Doggers  | Filed under: Reports | Tags:

The King’s Tournament in Romania was won by Nigel Short. He scored 7 out of 10, half a one and a half point more than a Lajos Portisch and Ulf Andersson.

The King’s Tournament was held May 24-June 3 in Bazna, Romania. It was an 11-player round-robin and so in every round, one of the participants had a free day.

It turned out that Nigel Short, who was to have his rest day in the final 11th round, secured tournament victory (and his 7,000 Euro cheque) already in his last 10th round. He didn’t lose a single game and defeated Andersson, Vaganian, Sokolov and Murariu.

Bazna 2008 Final Standings

        1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1      
1 Short,N 2660 +51 * ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 ½ 7.0/10   2713
2 Portisch,L 2523 +89 ½ * 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 5.5/10 26.50 2613
3 Andersson,U 2537 +74 0 1 * ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 5.5/10 26.00 2612
4 Suba,M 2487 +94 ½ ½ ½ * 1 ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ 5.0/10 25.50 2581
5 Beliavsky,A 2641 -74 ½ ½ ½ 0 * ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ 5.0/10 25.00 2566
6 Khalifman,A 2628 -60 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ * ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 5.0/10 25.00 2567
7 Mecking,H 2565 +8 ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ * 0 1 ½ 1 5.0/10 24.00 2573
8 Murariu,A 2483 +98 0 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 * ½ ½ 1 5.0/10 23.25 2581
9 Vaganian,R 2617 -118 0 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 0 ½ * ½ 0 4.0/10 20.00 2498
10 Sokolov,A 2596 -95 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ * 0 4.0/10 20.00 2496
11 Timman,J 2565 -61 ½ 0 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 0 1 1 * 4.0/10 19.00 2501


After the first four rounds, it seemed that the “Kings” were being a bit too friendly, since out of the first 20 games, 16 ended in a draw. In the end it was a bit better than that: out of 55 games, 13 games were won by White and 4 by Black, still a drawing percentage of 69%. You’ll find a selection of interesting games from rounds 5-10 on the right.

56-year-old Ulf Andersson and especially 71-year-old Lajos Portisch played an excellent tournament; Jan Timman (56) on the other hand had quite a disappointing result. Last year’s winner Alexander Khalifman apparently lacked energy after all that writing and was the only player to draw all his ten games.




Alexander Beliavsky - Alexander Khalifman


Henrique Mecking - Jan Timman


Andrei Murariu - Rafael Vaganian


Nigel Short - Ulf Andersson


Mihai Suba - Lajos Portisch

Links:

Comments

3 Responses to “Short wins in Romania”

  1. Q on 4 June 2008 22:03 PM

    Short was 1.5 points clear of the pack.

  2. The_Anonymous_Person on 5 June 2008 8:45 AM

    Good to see former top players such as Portisch and Andersson playing well once again. :)

    Interestingly, had Andersson beaten Short in their game, he would have won the torunament!

  3. Bert de Bruut on 6 June 2008 16:49 PM

    Hoezo stelde Timman teleur? Hij was de enige speler die minder dan de helft van zijn partijen in remise liet eindigen. In zijn offerpartijen tegen Portisch en Andersson mag hij zich dan hebben vergalloppeerd, hulde voor zijn strijdlust!

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