In round 9, tournament leader Jan Gustafsson drew quickly with White against Etienne Bacrot, allowing Adams, Movsesian and Vallejo to reach 7/9 as well. At this point the 'Gibraltar rules' kicked in: boards where one or both of the players could finish in a tie for first were required to start their games at 10:00 (GMT+1) on 4 February in order to allow time for a rapidplay play-off at 15:00 should it be necessary. This meant that boards 1-5 and 7 started at 10:00, namely Gustafsson vs Movsesian, Vallejo Pons vs Adams, Bacrot vs Cramling, Bindrich vs Kamsky, Zhukova vs Fressinet and Javakhishvili vs Sandipan. All other Masters games started at 15:00 (GMT+1) as normal. Stuart Conquest's commentary also started at 10:00 (GMT+1, 09:00 UK time), which you can still watch here.The games between the leaders were all drawn this morning which meant play-offs would be played. The four players with the best TPRs went forward to play off for the first prize. They were (as drawn by lottery): Jan Gustafsson (GER) vs Michael Adams (ENG) and (in the other semi-final) Paco Vallejo Pons (ESP) vs Chanda Sandipan (IND). The two-game semi-finals were being played at a time control of 10 minutes with 10 second increments and an Armageddon game if necessary. Paco Vallejo won the first semi-final game and miraculously drew a rook ending against Sandipan to reach the final. Gustafsson defeated Adams with White convincingly in game one and was close to a draw in game 2 but then blundered a piece and lost anyway. Adams also had White in the Armaggeddon and so Gustafsson was in the same situation: a draw with Black would enough. He didn't manage and so the final in Gibraltar saw a Spaniard against an Englishman.In this final, Adams dominated. He Vallejo smoothly in game 1 and was winning in game 2, but accepted a draw. With his victory the Englishman earned 15,000 pounds while the Spaniard went home with 10,000. Update Feb 5:
The tournament website doesn't report about it yet, but it looks like Natalia Zhukova won the women's prize of 8,000 pounds. She ended on 7/10, just like Humpy Konery, but Zhukova's performance rating of 2686 beats Humpy's 2663. The full final standings table is available below now too, as well as the games.
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.”