Four lead at Limburg Open

Traditionally many open tournaments take place during the Whitsun weekend and the Limburg Open is one of them. In the third edition of the tournament, four rounds have been played and at the moment GMs Berg and Solodovnichenko and IMs Brandenburg and Spoelman are leading with 3.5/4.

The third ENCI Limburg Open is held May 29 - June 1st in Maastricht, The Netherlands. It's a 7-round Swiss with a total of 289 participants; 96 in the top group. The € 10,000 prize fund (with a first prize of € 2250) has attracted several strong foreign players as well as a number of Dutch rising stars.

The tournament uses an accelarated pairings system which meant that the favorites didn't have a very easy first round on Friday evening. However, due to an inaccuracy by the arbiters all of them played with the white pieces. Dutch GM Sipke Ernst dropped half a point against FM Jochen Wigger on board 2 and 2008 co-winner GM Klimov also started with a draw against Joost Heltzel.

The second round, on Saturday morning, saw many draws while GM Arun Prasad lost to IM Zaragatski, who went on to beat GM Kunin in round 3. Another upset was FM Stefan Kuipers beating GM Dgebuadze, and quite convincingly.

In round 4 only GMs Berg and Solodovnichenko and IMs Brandenburg and Spoelman won at the top boards and they are the ones who share the lead at the moment of writing. A tough evening round is about to start, with Berg-Spoelman and Brandenburg-Solodovnichenko on the top boards. Click on Tournament Coverage at the tournament website for a link to the live games.

[TABLE=734]

Game viewer

Click on the pairings at the top of the board to reveal a drop down list of all the games. Click on the arrow under the board just once, then the arrow keys of your keyboard also work.

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN