Cheparinov Shines In Ruy Lopez Festival
The large number of chess 'supertournaments' in the modern era is such that many strong tournaments just below that level can be somewhat overshadowed.
This is a shame, especially when the tournaments are as entertaining as the Ruy Lopez Chess Festival which took place in Villafranca de los Barros, Spain from 11-19 June.
This 8-player single round-robin event had an interesting field, a very low percentage of drawn games, and a fantastic (TPR>2900 Elo) performance from Bulgarian Ivan Cheparinov to win by a clear 1.5 points.
Cheparinov also won the event last year, and will be back again to defend his title in 2011.
The final cross-table:
| Cheparinov, Ivan | BUL |
2640 | * | ½ | 1 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Caruana, Fabiano | ITA | 2675 | ½ | * | 1 | ½ | 1 | 0 | ½ | 1 | 4½ |
| Malakhov, Vladimir | RUS | 2722 | 0 | 0 | * | 1 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4½ |
| Sargissian, Gabriel | ARM | 2677 | ½ | ½ | 0 | * | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Salgado Lopez, Ivan | ESP | 2606 | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | * | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Perez Candelario, Manuel | ESP | 2527 | 0 | 1 | 0 | ½ | 0 | * | ½ | 0 | 2 |
| Cramling, Pia | SWE | 2536 | 0 | ½ | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | * | 1 | 2 |
| Cori T. Deysi | PER | 2409 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | * | 1 |
All the games can be downloaded in pgn format from the official site via this link. A brief selection of games are below.
