Hastings 09/10 ends in fourway tie
The 2009-10 Hastings Masters ended in a fourway tie for first place, between Mark Hebden, David Howell, Andrei Istratescu and Romain Edouard. Hebden and Istratescu were leading after 8 rounds and drew in 11 moves, allowing Howell and Edouard to join them.The 2009-10 Hastings tournament took place December 28th - January 5th at the Horntye Park Sports Complex in Hastings, England. It was a 9-round Swiss with Drozdovskij , Edouard, Hracek, Istratescu and Howell as the top seeds. The time control was 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes to finish the game + 30 seconds per move starting from the 1st.After his fine performance in London, David Howell had a good start in Hastings, where he was the only with a 100% score after three rounds. After a draw in round 4 he was joined by Yuri Drozdovskij (Ukraine), Romain Edouard (France), Andrei Istratescu (Romania) and Mark Hebden (England). In round 5 Istratescu beat Howell with Black due to a big blunder by the young English grandmaster.The Romanian GM kept his lead until round 8, and at that point he was sharing first place with Hebden. The two drew in just 11 moves in the last round, and were joined by Howell and Edouard, who beat their opponents Hracek and Ansell with the black pieces.As always, the tournament website's round reports were provided by the witty, and classical Steve Giddins. In his first report he started by claiming that he's been "possessed by the permanent feeling of having been born between 50 and 100 years too late", and that, well, he doesn't really like anything that's connected to the modern world, including art and films. The perfect round report author for a classical tournament such as Hastings, we'd say, and for anyone who wants to refresh his knowledge of Latin I can recommend his articles as well.
Selection of positions (from Steve Giddins' round reports)
Game viewer by ChessTempo
GM Keith Arkell (ENG, 2464), 6/9
GM Zbynek Hracek (CZE, 2624), 6/9
GM Yuri Drodovskij (UKR, 2625), 6.5/9
GM Danny Gormally (ENG, 2479), 6.5/9
GM Mark Hebden (ENG, 2522), 7/9
GM David Howell (ENG, 2597), 7/9
GM Romain Edouard (FRA, 2620), 7/9
GM Andrei Istratescu (ROM, 2624), 7/9
Video by Dave Clayton
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"203","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","height":"344","width":"425","style":""}}]]Links
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.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
Company Contact and News Accreditation:
Email: peter@chess.com FOR SUPPORT PLEASE USE chess.com/support!
Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Address: 877 E 1200 S #970397, Orem, UT 84097
