Grischuk still the strongest blitz player in Moscow

Former blitz world champion Alexander Grischuk was the strongest on Sunday in the Moscow blitz championship, held in a park in the Russian capital. Alexander Morozevich shared second place with Sergey Karjakin who is now a Muscovite as well.

The 63rd Moscow Blitz Championships took place on Sunday, August 30th and was sponsored, as always, by the Moscow evening newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva. The men's contest was a 22-player round-robin with 5 minutes per player per game on the clock. The final standings were

    1. Grischuk                       17 
  2-3. Morozevich, Karjakin           16½ 
  4-5. Kobalia, Malakhov              14 
  6-7. B.Savchenko, Jakovenko         13 
  8-9. Riazantsev, Amonatov           12½ 
   10. Dlugy                          11½ 
   11. Korotylev                      11 
12-13. Najer, Zvjagintsev             10½ 
   14. Dragomaretsky                  10 
   15. Grachev                         9 
   16. Vlassov                         8½ 
17-18. Kalinichev, Kastanieda          6 
19-21. Kosteniuk, Vorobiov, Mesropov   5 
   22. Vasiukov                        4

Unfortunately the games were not recorded but we have one small fragment:

Vlassov-Morozevich Moscow blitz 2009

Game viewer by ChessTempo


This one and other fragments of his games were were posted at the ChessPro forum by IM Nikolai Vlassov.

Thanks to Eldar Mukhametov, the editor of ChessMoscow whom I met in Nalchik this year, we can re-publish a few photos taken by Yana Melnikova:

Links

• More photos by Yana Melnikova here.
• Misha Savinov did a nice, pictorial report on the tournament.
• More photos, by Maria Fominykh, can be found here.