Dominguez Beats Maghsoodloo As Leon Semifinal Goes To Armageddon
On Saturday GM Leinier Dominguez qualified for the final of the Leon Chess Festival. The Cuban-born American grandmaster beat GM Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran by drawing the armageddon game and will play GM Jaime Santos in Sunday's final.
The games of the Leon Masters can be found here as part of our live events platform. GMs Simon Williams and Daniel Naroditsky are providing daily commentary on Chess.com/TV with games starting at 8:30 a.m. Pacific / 17:30 Central Europe.
The live broadcast of day two.
Friday's semifinal was not bad at all, but the one on Saturday was spectacular. Dominguez seemed to be cruising with a 2-0 lead and a winning position in game three. He was basically serving for the match when everything turned around.
Maghsoodloo won that third game and also the fourth, to secure two blitz games, and also won the first of those. Dominguez recovered right on time, won the second, and then held the armageddon game as Black to qualify after all.
Here is that moment in game three where the tables turned. Maghsoodloo's King's Indian Attack didn't go as planned, and at some point, all he could do is try to create some chaos knowing that even a draw wouldn't be enough.
Here's game six, the second blitz game that was a must-win for Dominguez. He dominated through most of the game and found a nice finish:
Below you can find all games of this semifinal. The final between Dominguez and Santos will be played on Sunday, July 17, at 8:30 a.m. Pacific / 17:30 Central Europe with commentary at Chess.com/TV.
Dominguez-Maghsoodloo | All games
The Masters tournament is part of a bigger festival that runs for a whole week. There is also an open blitz tournament (July 14-15) where the eight top finishers will qualify for a knockout final, a simultaneous exhibition with 25 boards by Dominguez on July 13, and a closed tournament (July 16-18 with four of the most promising upcoming stars of the chess world.
Find all info about these events here.
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.”
In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!
Company Contact and News Accreditation:
Email: peter@chess.com FOR SUPPORT PLEASE USE chess.com/support!
Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Address: PO Box 60400 Palo Alto, CA 94306
