European quickplay titles for Almasi and Vachier-Lagrave
Zoltan Almasi won the European Rapid Championship in Warsaw, Poland on Sunday. The Hungarian emerged as the winner after a play-off, as he had finished on 10.5/13 together with Vugar Gashimov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexei Shirov, Arkadij Naiditsch and Anton Korobov. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from France won the blitz title on Friday, ahead of Vassily Ivanchuk.Hundreds of players active in Warsaw | Photo © official site, more here. The European Blitz Championship was held on Friday, December 17th and the Rapid event took place on Saturday the 18th and Sunday the 19th. It was open to all players representing one of the ECU federations. Like last year, the venue was the giant Torwar Sports Complex in Warsaw, Poland, which is primarily used for music concerts, ice hockey and other indoor sports.The Blitz Championship, attended by almost 400 players, was a great success for 20-year-old Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. The French GM was on a roll and finished on a spectacular 22/26 (13 double rounds Swiss of 3 minutes and 2 seconds increment), two points ahead of Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk. 
Vachier-Lagrave's games (those which are available)
Game viewer by ChessTempoThe Rapid Championship was a more complicated affair, as Zoltan Almasi, Vugar Gashimov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexei Shirov, Arkadij Naiditsch and Anton Korobov all finished on 10.5/13. (Apparently Vachier-Lagrave had used all his energy on Friday, as he finished only 30th in the rapids.)There followed a quick blitz playoff which saw Armageddon games in each round - White got 5 minutes and Black 4, with 1 second increment for both and draw odds for Black. Almasi won the decisive (and crazy!) game with Black against Gashimov.Almasi did not participate in blitz part because of a simple reason – he didn't make it to reach Warsaw in time. Was it the reason for his success? Who knows...
Below you can replay all of Almasi's games and all play-off games. The rest of the action can be downloaded as PGN files below. Game viewer by ChessTempo
Links
- Official website
- Games in PGN: Rapid | Blitz via TWIC
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