Key tournaments ending this weekend
Hao, Vo and Bu win in China!
Wang Hao won on tiebreak over Bu
Vietnamese Vo Kim clear first with 7.5
Bu Xiangzhi. What went wrong?
(Photos by Lennart Ootes.) After a gruelling 9-rounds, Wang Hao and Bu Xiangzhi tied for first place in the Asian Continental with 7 points each. They share $20,000. In the women’s section, Vietnamese sensation Vo Kim took clear first place with 7.5 points. She wins $5,000. Congrats!
The Asian Continental (Open and Womens) took place in Chengdu, China between the 10th and 20th of May. The total prize fund was $75,000. The top 5 players from the open tournament qualify for the upcoming World Cup (a knock out championship), while the winner of the women’s group qualifies directly for the upcoming Women’s World Championship. Time control for the games was a relaxed 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes to finish (plus 30′ spm).
Ding Liren wins in Moscow!
It was a very good weekend for the Chinese! Besides Hao and Bu winning in Chengdu, 24-year old Ding won clear first at the Moscow Grand Prix with an undefeated 6 points from 9 games. Clearly, the days when Europe dominated world chess are drawing to an end…
The Moscow Grand Prix is the second in a series of four tournaments. The top two finishers will qualify for the Candidates tournament next year to select a challenger for the World Championship.
Twenty-four of the top players in the world are competing in the Grand Prix, with 18 playing in each tournament. (Each player competes in three of the four competitions.)
The Moscow tournament is being held in the Telegraph building in central Moscow, a landmark building that is steps from the Kremlin. The Telegraph was also the site of the 2016 Candidates tournament.
The series is sponsored by Kaspersky Lab, the global cybersecurity company, PhosAgro, a giant Russian fertilizer company, and EG Capital Advisors, a global financial management company. Each tournament has a prize fund of 130,000 euros.
The series is organized by Agon Limited, the commercial partner of the World Chess Federation, the game’s governing body. All the games are broadcast on WorldChess.com, the official site of the World Championship. (Taken from FIDE site)
The decisive last round encounter!
Going into the final round, Ding Liren and Mamedyarov were tied for the lead. However, the latter drew his game in 10 minutes, taking no chances at all and probably counting on Ding Liren (playing with the Black pieces against former World Champion Challenger Boris Gelfand) not doing better than a draw himself.
However, both Ding Liren and Boris Gelfand were out for blood! Gelfand sacrificed a piece at one point, but Ding Liren navigated his way thru the complications and emerged on top.
gm Gelfand,B – gm Ding,L Moscow 20.5.2017 E11 (0 – 1)
The very modest Ding Liren giving an interview to Anastasia after winning his last round game. Even though Ding is not at ease with English, he succeeds in transmitting his modesty and gentlemanly character. I like how he explains the role of his mother in his success! Well done, Anastasia! (After my initial criticism of her work earlier in the week here on this blog, she made a serious effort to improve the quality of her work and it is noticeable…)
