Korobov Leads Sunway Sitges After Flying Start
Third seed Anton Korobov of Ukraine started with a perfect 6/6 at the Sunway Sitges tournament before he drew with Vassily Ivanchuk in round seven. With three rounds to go, Korobov is half a point ahead of GMs Vasif Durarbayli of Azerbaijan and Puranik Abhimanyu of India.
The sixth Sunway Sitges international chess festival is taking place Dec. 13-22 at Hotel Sunway Playa Golf and Spa, which is about 35 kilometers southwest of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. As an official partner, Chess.com is covering the tournament daily with a live broadcast.
The Sunway Sitges games of rounds eight (Friday) and nine (Saturday) start at 16:30 local time, which is 10:30 a.m. Eastern and 7:30 a.m. Pacific. The final round on Sunday will start at 9:30 local time, which is 3:30 a.m. Eastern and 12:30 a.m. Pacific. You can follow them here as part of our live portal. Commentary is provided by GM Daniel King and IM Anna Rudolf on Chess.com/tv.
Much has happened in Sitges since our first report that covered the first three rounds. At that point, 17 players had started with three victories.
This report starts with Indian prodigy Praggnanandhaa R, who won an instructive game in round four against Nino Batsiashvili of Georgia. The way the young Indian met the h3-variation—without castling kingside and later going queenside instead—will be a joy for many King's Indian players.
For Pragg, 4/4 was a great start, but the next day Korobov was too strong. Still, the game was roughly equal for 38 moves, but the youngster started to play inaccurately as soon as the queens left the board.
Korobov got to play the Najdorf again the next day but with the white pieces. Already a tempo down compared to the normal lines, 21-year-old Narayanan S.L. of India played a few uncommon moves after the opening and was soon without any counterplay.
Meanwhile, Pragg had to play his second, very strong Ukrainian in a row: Vassily Ivanchuk. The former number-two in the world had dropped two half points early but was back in contention after this crushing win against the rising Indian star:
As Ivanchuk and Korobov played a relatively quick draw in round seven, two players got to just half a point behind the tournament leader: Durarbayli and Puranik. The latter, one of 85(!) Indian participants in Sitges, played a nice attacking game against Iran's Amin Tabatabaei.
The round-eight pairings for Friday include the games Korobov-Durarbayli, Igor Kovalenko vs. Puranik and Awonder Liang vs. Ivanchuk. The tournament is a 10-round Swiss. The total prize fund is 27,155 euros with a 5,000 first prize.
2019 Sunway Sitges | Round 7 Standings
| Rk. | SNo | FED | Title | Name | RtgI | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 |
| 1 | 3 | GM | Korobov Anton | 2668 | 6,5 | 30,0 | 33,5 | 30,75 | |
| 2 | 18 | GM | Durarbayli Vasif | 2609 | 6,0 | 26,5 | 29,5 | 25,50 | |
| 3 | 26 | GM | Puranik Abhimanyu | 2580 | 6,0 | 25,5 | 29,0 | 24,50 | |
| 4 | 9 | GM | Donchenko Alexander | 2644 | 5,5 | 28,5 | 32,0 | 24,50 | |
| 5 | 33 | GM | Nasuta Grzegorz | 2545 | 5,5 | 28,5 | 31,5 | 24,25 | |
| 6 | 1 | GM | Ivanchuk Vassily | 2690 | 5,5 | 28,5 | 31,0 | 24,00 | |
| 7 | 25 | GM | Santos Latasa Jaime | 2585 | 5,5 | 28,5 | 31,0 | 23,75 | |
| 8 | 13 | GM | Narayanan.S.L | 2626 | 5,5 | 28,0 | 31,0 | 21,75 | |
| 9 | 8 | GM | Kovalenko Igor | 2647 | 5,5 | 27,5 | 31,5 | 24,25 | |
| 10 | 21 | GM | Gareyev Timur | 2598 | 5,5 | 27,5 | 31,0 | 23,75 | |
| 11 | 27 | GM | Wagner Dennis | 2578 | 5,5 | 27,5 | 30,0 | 22,75 | |
| 12 | 34 | GM | Erigaisi Arjun | 2544 | 5,5 | 27,0 | 30,5 | 23,75 | |
| 13 | 23 | GM | Liang Awonder | 2593 | 5,5 | 25,5 | 28,5 | 22,00 | |
| 14 | 14 | GM | Heimann Andreas | 2617 | 5,5 | 25,5 | 28,5 | 21,75 | |
| 15 | 20 | GM | Salgado Lopez Ivan | 2605 | 5,5 | 25,0 | 28,0 | 21,50 | |
| 16 | 22 | GM | Svane Rasmus | 2597 | 5,5 | 24,5 | 28,0 | 22,00 | |
| 17 | 11 | GM | Tabatabaei M.Amin | 2635 | 5,0 | 31,5 | 34,5 | 23,25 | |
| 18 | 35 | GM | Li Di | 2543 | 5,0 | 29,0 | 31,5 | 19,75 | |
| 19 | 24 | GM | Praggnanandhaa R | 2586 | 5,0 | 28,5 | 32,0 | 20,00 | |
| 20 | 71 | IM | Parvanyan Ashot | 2456 | 5,0 | 28,5 | 31,0 | 20,75 |
The tournament is part of a bigger festival with a lot of side events. For example, there are simuls, daily GM lectures, water aerobics, blitz tournaments, foosball, chess documentaries and, last but not least, cooking master classes. There's so much that one cannot even attend everything because some activities overlap each other.
The Korobov master class. Video: Sunway Sitges.
The Ivanchuk master class. Video: Sunway Sitges.
Here’s #MasterChef at #sunwaysitges: tortilla! This is the first of several workshops that make this tournament stand out. Few chess players attending though... pic.twitter.com/9FwuhATsQn
— ChesscomNews (@ChesscomNews) December 16, 2019
Today was an exhausting day of chess and side activities at #SunwaySitges and players are finally resting now. The "Champions' Corridor" of the venue (inside the official hotel) is lonely now... Thanks @Anna_Chess, @DanielKingChess, @pepeich_cuenca and @El_Divis for broadcasting! pic.twitter.com/9nzRS1UkKR
— Sunway Chess Open (@SunwayChessOpen) December 17, 2019
And on to the tapas workshop! #neveradullmoment #sunwaysitges pic.twitter.com/tc8VV8gFUb
— ChesscomNews (@ChesscomNews) December 18, 2019
Previous report:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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