Bacrot wins Aeroflot, Karjakin takes blitz

French GM Etienne Bacrot has won the 2009 Aeroflot Open in Moscow. He finished on on 6.5/9 alongside Alexander Moiseenko but the Frenchman took first place because he played more games with the black pieces than Moiseenko. Corus winner Sergey Karjakin took first prize at the World Blitz Championship Preliminaries.

The 8th International Chess Festival “Aeroflot Open 2009" was held in Moscow from February 16th to 27th. It was open to chess players of different levels: from unrated to having a 2700 rating! As always, the big sponsor was the Russian airline Aeroflot.

For the fourth year running, the festival takes place in the major tourist complex “Izmailovo” - hotel “Gamma – Delta”. Four Open Tournaments (A1, A2, B and C), all 9-round Swisses, were made up according to the rating of the participants.

The prize fund for the A1 tournament (for chessplayers with a FIDE rating higher than 2549) was € 70,000. In the middle of the tournament the news was all about Shakhryiar Mamedyarov quitting the tournament after accusing his opponent of cheating, but we'll now return to the chess part of the event!

After eight rounds the surprising leader of the tournament was the Armenian player GM Arman Pashikian, who was the only one who had collected six points. He was defeated by French top GM Etienne Bacrot, who finished shared first with GM Alexander Moiseenko. Bacrot was declared the winner on tiebreak, having played more games with Black than Moiseenko. All of Bacrot's Aeroflot games can be replayed under the final standings.

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All games by Etienne Bacrot

This time, within the festival the Qualification Tournament for the World Blitz Championship wasl be held in addition to the four open tournaments. The tournament was held yesterday and was won by by 19-year-old Sergey Karjakin, who also came first at the prestigeous Corus Chess Tournament last month.

The tournament was a nine-round Swiss with 165 participants, in which the opponents played mini-matches of two games. Karjakin finished on an terrific score of 15/18, but only half a point aheadof Gashimov. The third place was shared by Mamedyarov and good old Bareev. These players, together with Tkachiev and Zhou Jianchao (!) who finished fifth and sixth on tiebreak, qualified for the Blitz World Championship scheduled for November as a part of the Tal Memorial. Something that big guns like Jakovenko, Svidler, Ponomariov, Dreev and Bacrot didn't achieve!

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Links:

• Official website
• Blitz Qualifier website
• Games Aeroflot in PGN