Gawain Jones Leads As Tepe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament Takes Off

As the only winner of the first round, Gawain Jones took an early lead at the Tepe Sigeman & Co Tournament in Malmo, Sweden. 

The Tepe Sigeman & Co Tournament is celebrating its 25th edition this year with an extended playing field. Eight players (up from six) are competing in what is now a seven-round tournament, held May 3-9 in Malmo.

The venue is also new. This year the tournament moved away from the Hipp theatre (the location from 1998 to 2018) to Malmo Live, a rather new concert hall, opened in August 2015, for music, culture and entertainment.

The tournament has been held since 1993, and former winners include Viktor Korchnoi, Boris Gelfand, Judit Polgar, Vassily Ivanchuk, Nigel Short, Jan Timman, Anish Giri and Fabiano Caruana.

As always, the field this year is a nice mix of experience, rising stars and local grandmasters, but the main rule for this tournament has always been that only players known for their fighting skills are invited.

Nils Grandelius shared first in the last two editions, with Baadur Jobava in 2017 and with Vidit Gujrathi in 2018, but these events only lasted five rounds.

2019 TePe Sigeman & Co Tournament | Participants

Inviting these players doesn't always guarantee lots of decisive games, of course. But even though there was just one decisive game, the first round did see lots of fighting chess.

It wasJones who started with with a win against Parham Maghsoodloo. The Englishman had played in the Italian league in between the Reykjavik Open and this event, so he was far from rusty.

Busy but very enjoyable few weeks. Reykjavik always fantastic and even better this time accompanied by good Kiwi friends @billforsternz, Maria and Alan. 1st= and published over 2700 for the first time. Straight to Italian Master making debut for victorious Padova. Now to Malmö!

— Gawain Jones (@GMGawain) May 2, 2019

Although he did win in the end, Jones actually missed a win with Black that was based on one very nice idea, and one beautiful point later in the combination. Can you find it?

In what was a complicated middlegame, Maghsoodloo soon made more mistakes and lost a piece. He kept on fighting anyway, but Jones steered the game with a firm hand towards a win:

In the battle between the top seed and the lowest seed, Tiger Hillarp Persson, also the oldest participant, held his own against Pentala Harikrishna. 

Nihal Sarin, one of the youngest grandmasters in the world, showed his talent against the 2018 European champion Ivan Saric of Croatia. The 14-year-old Indian player played a great game and had his opponent on the ropes, but eventually allowed him to escape with a draw.

Nils Grandelius and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu were the first to end their game today. It was a relatively quick draw, but with some nice, hidden tactics:

The remaining rounds will be played May 4-9, starting at 2 p.m. local time and the last round two hours earlier.

The round 1 official broadcast.