Karjakin to Monaco

The NH Tournament here in Amsterdam is already over again. For a long time it was quite exciting, the Rising Stars leading by just one point, but thanks to a strong last round the talents beat the Experience with a three-point margin at the end: with 26.5-23.5. Karjakin became first in the ‘internal competition’ of the Rising Stars and received the desired ticket for the next Melody Amber Tournament in Monaco, March next year. (Jan Smeets told me he might have preferred winning this one instead of the Dutch Ch!)

To ease finding your way to the nicest moments in this tournament, I collected the most interesting victories.

Individual final standings:

 1. Karjakin, Sergey        g UKR 2678 7.0
 2. Cheparinov, Ivan        g BUL 2657 6.0
 3. Jussupow, Artur         g GER 2583 5.5
 4. Nikolic, Predrag        g BIH 2646 5.5
 5. Smeets, Jan             g NED 2538 5.5
 6. Khalifman, Alexander    g RUS 2632 5.0
 7. Stellwagen, Daniël      g NED 2631 4.5
 8. Beliavsky, Alexander G  g SLO 2653 4.0
 9. Ljubojevic, Ljubomir    g SRB 2550 3.5
10. Negi, Parimarjan        g IND 2529 3.5

Team:
Rising Stars 26,5
Experience 23,5

The playing hall once more

Karjakin-Beliavsky

Jussupow-Smeets

Khalifman-Negi

Stellwagen-Nikolic

Ljubojevic-Cheparinov

Qualified for Melody Amber (Monaco) 2008: Sergei Karjakin

A boat trip over the Amsterdam canals on the rest day

Photos courtesy of the NH Chess Tournament website. More to be found here.