Groningen 2010: Bojkov wins, Nyzhnyk grandmaster

The 2010 Chess Festival in Groningen was won by Dejan Bojkov. The Bulgarian grandmaster won on tiebreak after finishing shared first with GMs Mark Bluvshtein and Sipke Ernst, and IMs Brandenburg, Van Kampen and Nyzhnyk. The latter scored his third GM norm at the age of 14, while the two Dutch IMs scored their second norm.

GM Dejan Bojkov wins on tiebreak in Groningen while 14-year-old Ilya Nyzhnyk scores his third GM norm | Photos © Official website

The Groningen Chess Festival 2010 took place December 21-30, 2010 at the Sports Centre of the Rijksuniversiteit & Hanzehogeschool in Groningen, The Netherlands. Already at the opening ceremony there was some good news: organizer Jan Colly announced that "the route to 2014 will be continued". In that year the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen will turn 400 years old and a big chess event is planned to be part of the festivities.

The top group of the open tournament, with players rated 2100 and higher fighting for a 2500 Euros first prize, attracted 11 GMs and 13 IMs. In this 9-round Swiss the rate of play was 40 moves in 90 minutes and then 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move 1.

The tournament started with an upset in round one: GM Mark Bluvshtein from Canada lost to the talented Armenian Vahe Bagdasaryan, while experienced GMs Vladimir Baklan and Friso Nijboer drew with Shiven Kosla and Wim Heemskerk respectively. Nijboer had an excuse: his train was delayed considerably and therefore he arrived at the board quite late.

In the second round the young Dutch IM Robin van Kampen, who played a match against Jan Timman last year in Groningen, missed several chances to beat GM Abhijeet Gupta. Matthew Herman from the USA, who had beaten IM Benjamin Bok in the first round, managed to draw with GM Nijboer.

In the third round Ilya Nyzhnyk grabbed the lead with a relatively easy win over Dutch GM Jan Werle, whereas other boards saw a few short draws. The next day Nyzhnyk drew with another Dutch GM, Sipke Ernst, which allowed Bulgarian GM Dejan Bojkov to catch him in the standings.

December 25th was the only rest day, despite the fact that December 26th is also an official national holiday in The Netherlands ("second Christmas day"). After round 5 the tournament had 6 leaders, including IM Daan Brandenburg, who had beaten GM Jan Werle. By then GM Bluvshtein had recovered well with four wins in a row.

The tournament got even more exciting as two more players joined the group of leaders after the sixth round. The next day, however, again the duo Bojkov and Nyzhnyk had half a point more than the rest of the field. Bojkov had beaten Bok, while Nyzhnyk was too strong for the Hungarian Prohaszka.



In round 8, with a solid draw against GM Gupta, 14-year-old Nyzhnyk secured his third and final GM norm with a round to spare. Here's Chessbase's list of young GMs:

No.	Player	Nat.	Years	Months	Days	Year
1	Sergey Karjakin	UKR	12	7	0	2002
2	Parimarjan Negi	IND	13	3	22	2006
3	Magnus Carlsen	NOR	13	3	27	2004
4	Bu Xiangzhi	CHN	13	10	13	1999
5	Richard Rapoport	HUN	13	11	15	2010
6	Teimour Radjabov	AZE	14	0	14	2001
7	Ruslan Ponomariov	UKR	14	0	17	1997
8	Wesley So	PHI	14	1	28	2007
9	Etienne Bacrot	FRA	14	2	0	1997
10	Jorge Cori	PERU	14	2	0	2010
11	Ilya Nyzhnyk	UKR	14	3	2	2010
12	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	FRA	14	4	0	2005
13	Peter Leko	HUN	14	4	22	1994
14	Hou Yifan	CHN	14	6	2	2008
15	Anish Giri	RUS	14	7	2	2009
16	Yuri Kuzubov	UKR	14	7	12	2004
17	Dariusz Swiercz	POL	14	7	29	2004
18	Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son	VIE	14	10	0	2004
19	Ray Robson	USA	14	11	16	2009
20	Fabiano Caruana	ITA	14	11	20	2007
21	Koneru Humpy	IND	15	1	27	2002
22	Hikaru Nakamura	USA	15	2	19	2003
23	Pentala Harikrishna	IND	15	3	5	2001
24	Judit Polgar	HUN	15	4	28	1991
25	Alejandro Ramirez	CRI	15	5	14	2003
26	Bobby Fischer	USA	15	6	1	1958

Source: Chessbase

Traditionally this list of "youngest GMs in history" starts with Bobby Fischer, who became a GM in 1958, when he was 15 years, 6 months and 1 day old. However, strictly speaking this list of youngest grandmasters ever contains just ten names, and will stay like this until the day that Sergey Karjakin's record will be broken:

1950 – 1: David Bronstein (26) 1952 – 2: Tigran Petrosian (22?) 1955 – 3: Boris Spassky (18) 1958 – 4: Robert Fischer (15-6-1) 1991 – 5: Judit Polgar (15-4-28) 1994 – 6: Peter Leko (14-4-22) 1997 – 7: Etienne Bacrot (14-2-0) 1997 – 8: Ruslan Ponomariov (14-0-17) 1999 – 9: Bu Xiangzhi (13-10-13) 2002 – 10: Sergey Karjakin (12-7-0)

Back to Groningen, where Dutch IM Daan Brandenburg secured his second GM norm also with a round to spare: he beat GM Arkadij Rotstein. Bluvshtein beat Balkan and joined the leaders. The Canadian is playing fulltime chess for a year and blogs about it - he'll also be participating in the Tata Steel Chess Tournament later this month.

After nine rounds six players eventually shared the top prizes: Daan Brandenburg, Sipke Ernst, Robin van Kampen, Dejan Bojkov, Illya Nyzhnyk and Mark Bluvstein. With a nice win against Andriasian in the last round, Van Kampen was the third player to score a GM norm in Groningen. Shiven, Nardoitsky and Baghdasaryan scored IM norms.

And so there's a good chance Groningen will see both Dejan Bojkov and Ilya Nyzhnyk again soon, as the two players keep pleasant memories from the city in the northeast part of the Netherlands. Bojkov won a round-robin tournament last August in Groningen, while Nyzhnyk was (also) the winner of the open tournament in December last year.

Groningen Chess Festival 2010 | Group A | Final Standings

Selection of games

Game viewer by ChessTempo


This report was based on the excellent official website's round reports (in Dutch only).

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC