Hannes, Hao & Yue win in Reykjavik
Wang Hao was joined by his compatriot Wang Yue, as well as the Icelandic GM Hannes Stefansson, in the final standings of the Reykjavik Open. We have videos of the Fischer Memorial (a rapid round-robin with Hort, Portisch, Olafsson and Benk?ɬ?).We had left the tournament after the seventh round. The two Wang's Hao and Yue drew their game in just sixteen moves, with which Hao allowed Hannes Stefansson to catch him, who beat Viktor Mikhalevski. Especially disappointing for the Israeli GM, who played some great chess - look at 20.Qb4! and especially the phase from move 28. White missed a win with 33.Bxd8 and 34.g6.Fabiano Caruana recovered from his first (and only) loss in the tournament to Wang Hao by beating Tiger Hillarp Persson with relative ease:The top board Wang Hao-Stefansson wasn't a highly entertaining draw (38 moves, though). This way, Wang Yue, who had lost his first-round game to one of the tournament organizers, eventually finished shared first by crushing Stelios Halkias with Black.And so Wang Hao had to share the first place, but on tiebreak he did win the event. Playing organizer Bjorn Thorfinsson became an IM after his very succesful tournament, and Espen Lie and Inna Gaponenko scored GM norms. IM norms were scored by Nils Grandelius and Ray Robson, and Lemona Simontaite scored a WIM norm. Final standings (top 20):[TABLE=179]During the last two rounds of the Reykjavik Open, a special, small Fischer memorial was organized in which Pal Benk?ɬ?, Vlastimil Hort, Fridrik Olafsson and Lajos Portisch played a double round-robin (20 minutes plus 5 seconds per move - Fischer tempo!). No-one less than Boris Spassky was the arbiter, and William Lombardy, Fischer's second during the match of the century, was the commentator.
Grandmasters Fridrik Olafsson and Vlastimil Hort chatting before the start of the Fischer memorial tournament.
Olafsson and Benk?ɬ? and at the back Vlastimil Hort and Lajos Portisch.
Portisch & Olafsson and at the back Hort & Benk?ɬ?.
The tournament website hasn't really been updated very well, and I haven't found results or standings of this memorial. But from looking at the games the final standings should be
Hort, Portisch 4 Olafsson 2,5 Benk?ɬ? 1,5On the second day of play, these legends started one hour later than was planned, because they had requested some rest after their visit to Bobby Fischer's grave.
A clearly moved Spassky bent and dusted snow off the grave and flowers before straightening up and wiping his eyes. "Do you think the spot next to him is available," he joked to reporters afterward, adding, "We will see what happens." (Reuters)Thanks to Omar Salama for parts of the material.Links:
- Tournament website
- Available games in PGN
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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