Cheparinov leads in Zafra
In another relatively new event, Ivan Cheparinov leads the Magistral Ruy Lopez with a score of 2.5 out of 3. The tournament takes place in Zafra, Spain - the place where Ruy Lopez was born.
This year for the third time the Festival Internacional de Ajedrez Ruy Lopez is held in Zafra, Spain, where the priest was born in 1540. The main attraction is the Magistral, an 8-player round robin that takes place June 13-19.Like in previous years, after the event there will be an international rapid tournament on June 20 and 21 with the obligatory moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5. The rate of play for this side event is 25 minutes. The prize fund of ‚Ǩ 11,000 (first prize ‚Ǩ 3,000) will surely attract a number of well-known players again.Like in the previous two editions, the field of participants in the Magistral is quite an interesting mixture: GMs Michael Adams, Ivan Cheparinov, Fabiano Caruana, Humpy Koneru, Julio Granda Zuniga, Pia Cramling, and IMs Manuel Perez Candelario and David Lari?±o Nieto.Perez Candelario and Granda Zuniga played in both previous events while Caruana, Koneru and Adams came back to Zafra after their debut last year.The first round immediately started with a big upset as last year's winner Adams lost to the talented Spanish International Master David Lari?±o Nieto. In great attacking style the Spaniard brought down the normally so solid Englishman. Cheparinov beat Caruana with White in a nice Gr?ºnfeld using both sides of the board and then surprising his opponent with a queen sac.The next day Adams recovered well by grinding down Caruana - the Italian's second loss. Lari?±o couldn't keep the same level and was slowly outplayed by Cramling. Koneru beat Perez Candelario, who is the second of Alexei Shirov, but instead of working for the boss in Romania, he's playing himself now. Granda Zuniga-Cheparinov was a theoretically relevant draw in a Botvinnik Slav.These two good rounds were followed by the bloodiest so far: the third, in which all games were decisive. Adams won a pawn in the opening and never let go against Cramling - look at that accuracy! Perez proved the strongest IM against Lari?±o while Caruana scored his first win, against Granda. But after three rounds it's Cheparinov who leads, as he won against Koneru.[TABLE=745]
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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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