Another strong start for Almasi in Reggio Emilia
He's defending his title and he started this year's Torneo di Capodanno with three wins. Zoltan Almasi leads in Reggio Emilia, ahead of Ni Hua, Dreev and Gustafsson.It's quite an old event already: this year for the 51st time, Reggio Emilia, a town of about 170,000 inhabitants in northern Italy, is the location of the Torneo di Capodanno. Among its previous winners (a list that's not yet including last year's event, but we can tell you that it was Zoltan Almasi who won the 50th edition!) are Portisch, Andersson, Ribli, Anand and Karpov.In the Mercure Hotel Astoria Reggio Emilia a 10-player round-robin is taking place 27 December - 4 January, with GM Zoltan Almasi (2663, HUN) defending his title against Ni Hua (CHN, 2710), Alexey Dreev (RUS, 2670), Jan Gustafsson (GER, 2634), Konstantin Landa (RUS, 2613), GM Mihail Marin (ROM, 2556), Manuel Leon Hoyos (MEX, 2535), GM Miso Cebalo (ROM, 2493), IM Luca Shytaj (ITA, 2472) and IM Niccol?? Ronchetti (ITA, 2414). The latter two are trying to score a GM norm in Reggio, for which a score of 5/9 is needed.
Almasi had an excellent start again: he won his first three games. In the first round he beat Landa by adopting 3.d4 against the Petroff and then outplaying his opponent with remarkable ease. Then, again with White, he more or less treated Marin the same against the Romanian's beloved Pirc. In the third round 11...Nc6! was a nice move against Cebalo (the idea is 12.d5? Bxe2 13.dxc6 Qd4+! winning on the spot) which meant Black had won the opening battle, and after some more inaccuracies by the Romanian the ending was soon pretty hopeless for White.The Hungarian's main rival is the Chinese GM Ni Hua, who's 2710 makes him top seed. He beat Cebalo and Ronchetti Black and then drew with Dreev, who beat Leon Hoyos and drew with Gustafsson. Here are all games of the first three rounds:
Games rounds 1-3
[TABLE=552]
Analysing the game: Almasi and Landa
Marin trying his beloved Pirc Defence in the second round against Almasi
Cebalo and Shytaj, in their post-mortem
Learning from a 2700 player: Ronchetti in his post-mortem against Ni Hua
Miso Cebalo vs Ni Hua
Alexey Dreev vs Manuel Leon Hoyos
Jan Gustafsson vs Niccolo Ronchetti
Mihail Marin vs Luca Shytaj
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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