Jaan Ehlvest Wins Chicago Open

The 2009 Chicago Open ended on Monday with victory for Jaan Ehlvest (pictured) in a sudden-death decider against top seed Gabriel Sargassian.  The event attracted a 50-strong field with 17 GMs among them.  

The format was a 7-round Swiss Open, and Ehlvest and Sargassian both finished on 5.5 points, sharing the combined $12,000 prize money for 1st and 2nd places.  They were half a point ahead of the chasing pack of GMs which included Loek Van Wely, Yuri Shulman and Alexander Shabalov.

Besides the Open section, there were also graded events for Under 2300, 2100, 1900, 1700, 1500, 1300 and 900.  That's a lot of chess!

Full details of the results from the Open event and all the graded events can be found at the official website, which also has a selection of games available to download in PGN format.

The sudden-death playoff Armageddon game (White 5 minutes, Black 3 minutes, both with a 5 second increment) which decided the title is below.