Avrukh leads in Zurich, two rounds to go
At the Jubilee Open in Zurich the situation at the top of the standings is getting very tense, with two more rounds to go. Only Boris Avrukh from Israel managed to collect 6 points out of 7 rounds, and he's chased by 11 GMs with half a point less, including Alexander Morozevich.The Zurich Jubilee Open takes place August 9-15 in the Kongresshaus Zürich and is part of the activities of the 200-year anniversary celebrations of the Schachgesellschaft Zürich. A total of 536 players are trying their luck and the top group, called Alois Nagler Memorial, has 45 grandmasters and 48 International Masters competing for CHF 75,000 in prize money offered by the Alois Nagler Foundation.We're talking about one of the strongest opens of 2009 with no-one less than Alexander Morozevich as top seed, and normally we'd have covered it earlier, but with so many tournaments going on at the same time, it's hard to keep track.In round 4 Morozevich drew with Geetha while the 15-year-old Chinese super-talent Hou Yifan lost to IM Agopov. GMs Dreev and Areshchenko were the only ones to win their first four games, and drew in 9 moves in round 5, allowing Golod, Sandipan and Geetha to join them in the lead.After round 6 there were no less than 12 GMs on shared first place with 5.0/6. This group was led by Alexander Morozevich, who had beaten Chanda Sandipan in a fantastic, tactical slugfest followed by a rook ending. The game was clearly one of the highlights of the Jubilee so far.Yesterday's round saw many draws on the top boards but Avrukh beat Jovanovic with Black to take sole lead with two more rounds to go. At the moment of writing round 8 is being played, in which Sandipan and Dreev took a quick draw on board 3.
Selection of interesting games
Game viewer by ChessTempo
Alexander Morozevich, top seed in a strong open this time
Pentala Harikrishna from India
Russian GM Alexei Dreev
Gopal Geetha Narayanan, compatriot of Pentala
Hungarian Lajos Portisch, still playing every now and then
Hou Yifan from China
Brimming with experience: Artur Jussupow...
...with daughter Ekaterina also playing
Robert Hess (USA)
Local hero Yannick Pelletier
Anish Giri from Russia, but living in and playing for The Netherlands
Daniel Fridman, who won the blitz tournament yesterday
Potential future world champions meeting for a blitz game: Hou Yifan vs Anish Giri
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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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