Gibraltar: Four on three

Only four players are left with a perfect score in Gibraltar, and none of them is Chinese.

Photo: Zeljka Malobabic

The 6th Gibtelecom Chess Festival is being held 22-31 January 2008 at the Caleta Hotel in Gibraltar. At the Masters, a strong, ten-round Swiss event, Beliavsky, Akobian, Banikas and Stefanova have won their first three games.

Players such as Bu Xiangzhi, Ni Hua, Hikaru Nakamura and Wang Hao have already dropped one half point.

Especially Stefanova started well, with two nice victories over M.Gurevich and Petrosian. Perhaps she's extra motivated by the existence of special women's prizes, which can be won on top of the regular prizes. The best woman gains an extra five thousand pounds (appr. 6,200 euros).

Jon Speelman's rating is a somewhat surprising 2491 these days, but the former candidate match player managed to bring back some nice memories by beating Viorel Bologan with Black in round two.

The standings show an intersting field with players from a high number of countries. We're already wondering who we will pick for an interview, as ChessVibes will bring (video) reports of the last four rounds from Gibraltar.




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Full standings and pairings here.

The organizers created a video on the day of the first round. Make sure you don't miss the bit at about 2.5 minutes when GM Ian Rogers's piece to camera is interrupted by an ape which appears on the screen briefly. Ian keeps looking nervously to his right but he bravely continues his narration...

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Some photos:

Bu Xiangzhi	Elisabeth Paehtz
Anna Muzychuk	Antoaneta Stefanova & Viktorija Cmilyte
Hikaru Nakamura	Wang Hao
Kiril Georgiev & Jonathan Speelman	Tigran Petrosian

A total of 35 photos of Gibraltar 2008 are now at Flickr.

Related article:

• "Chinese squad calls at Gibraltar"

External links:

• Tournament website
• Their videos
• Games so far in PGN