Grandelius Wins Abu Dhabi Masters On Tiebreak

On Sunday GM Nils Grandelius scored his career's best result, winning the strong Abu Dhabi Masters on tiebreak. The 22-year-old Swedish GM edged out GMs Martyn Kravtsiv, Baadur Jobava, Alexander Areshchenko and Richard Rapport.

All photos courtesy of the Abu Dhabi Chess Club.

This brief report picks up the Abu Dhabi Masters where we left it: after round six, when GMs Nils Grandelius, Martyn Kravtsiv, Alexander Areshchenko, Richard Rapport and Abhijeet Gupta were sharing first place.

Grandelius made a big step towards tournament victory in round seven, when he defeated GM Richard Rapport with the black pieces. The Hungarian grandmaster played the Trompowsky. Grandelius responded with a solid variation and slowly outplayed his opponent:

Grandelius was the sole leader with two rounds go to, as boards two (Gupta-Areshchnko) and three (Kravtsiv-Akopian) ended in draws.

Following a typical Hollywood scenario, Grandelius went down in the penultimate round, before rising up again to emerge victoriously after all. It was Ukrainian GM Areshchenko who played a very powerful game that deviated from a 1942 encounter on move 14:

Meanwhile Martyn Kravtsiv, another Ukranian, scored a somewhat lucky win as Abhijeet Gupta collapsed in time trouble. The Indian had a clear perpetual twice just before the time control but let his king be checkmated instead:

In the final round compatriots Kravtsiv and Areshchenko used a line from the Poisoned Pawn Najdorf to draw quickly, hoping that no other players would finish on seven points. Instead, three caught them in first place: Rapport, Jobava and Grandelius.

Rapport defeated Polish grandmaster Dariusz Swiercz, again using the Trompowsky. The two main themes were White's monster bishop on d5, and the control of the d-line.

Jobava's last round win was against Armenian GM Tigran Petrosian. The game was about equal when Jobava suddenly got the opportunity to play a thematic pawn sacrifice. From that moment he was in full control:

The last name that was added to the group of people with 7.0/9 was Grandelius, who won a fantastic battle against the highly experienced, 43-year-old Vladimir Akopian:

As it turned out, Grandelius had the best tiebreak and so he was declared the winner. After his victory at the European Youth Chess Championship in 2011 in Albena, Bulgaria this must be Grandelius' new career's best performance.

Well done @GMGrandelius on a well deserved victory. https://t.co/kP1AgRCk8N

— Gawain Jones (@GMGawain) August 31, 2015

2015 Abu Dhabi Masters | Final Standings

(Full final standings here.)