Ivanchuk wins in Benidorm
If everything went according to plan he already travelled to Nanjing, China to play another tournament on another continent starting today, but only two days ago Vassily Ivanchuk scored 8/10 in a rapid event in Benidorm, Spain to finish clear first ahead of Alexei Shirov.The 7th, quite impressive Festival Internacional de Ajedrez took place 1-8 december in the beach resort of Benidorm, Spain. (Interestingly, the weaker the players, the bigger the prizes they got: the open for FIDE <2000 had a first prize of 4500 Euros, the 2000-2300 group winner earned 3000 Euros and first in the "Open Master" >2300 yielded only 1500 Euros.)The top group, called Grand Torneo de las Estrellas (grand tournament of the stars), was a bit of a strange mixture: Vassily Ivanchuk and Alexei Shirov together with Sergei Tiviakov, Kateryna Lahno, Xavi Vila and Sabrina Vega. Who? Well, Vila and Vega are obviously two talented young, Spanish players and for them it was just great to participate in such a strong double round-robin. Which was rapid play, by the way. Oh, and Vila managed to beat Shirov, we shouldn't forget to mention that!Ivanchuk won the event convincingly, and his 8/10 could have been even better if he hadn't spoilt his ending with a pawn up against Shirov (which he eventually even lost). Spaniards love chess, but unfortunately they're still not the biggest talents as far as web coverage is concerned. At the tournament website, the menu on the left goes completely crazy in Firefox and Safari and, more importantly, many of the games played in the Grand Torneo de las Estrellas don't seem to have been saved for eternity.Luckily the following gem by tournament winner Vassily Ivanchuk was available:
The six players in Grand Hotel Bali, Benidorm, Spain
Ivanchuk, the convincing winner, trying to forget about drug tests and related subjects
Alexei Shirov, who recently expressed his support to Ivanchuk in an open letter
European Champion Sergei Tiviakov didn't play the Olympiad for The Netherlands but still a very active player
Kateryna Lahno, part of the Olympic silver winning team, the Ukraine
Xavier Vila Gazquez, a talented Spanish IM from the same generation as Magnus Carlsen
21-year-old Sabrina Vega Gutierrez, Spain's 3rd female player
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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