Kritz & Mikhalevski lead SPICE Cup
After four rounds GMs Leonid Kritz and Victor Mikhalevski are leading the 2nd SPICE Cup International Invitational Tournament, according to the organizers "the strongest field of chess grandmasters in U.S. round-robin history".The second SPICE Cup is taking place 19-28 September at the Texas Tech University located in Lubbock, Texas. It's the main attraction of Texas Tech's annual SPICE Cup Festival. Other activities include the 2008 Texas Women's Open Championship, SPICE Cup Grand Prix, SPICE Cup Scholastic and SPICE Cup Amateur Under 1000 Open. SPICE stands for "Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence" at the Texas Tech University.
After the first SPICE Cup was won by GM Eugene Perelshteyn last year, for the second edition the organizers managed to bring together an interesting field again - and a very strong one, since the defending champion is the last seeded player this year!Participants: Onischuk, Alexander (2670, USA), Pentala, Harikrishna (2668, IND), Kritz, Leonid (2610, GER), Akobian, Varuzhan (2610, USA), Kaidanov, Gregory (2605, USA), Becerra, Julio (2598, USA), Mikhalevski, Victor (2592, ISR), Miton, Kamil (2580, POL), Stefansson, Hannes (2566, ISL) and Perelshteyn, Eugene (2555, USA).This makes the 2nd SPICE Cup a Category 15 round-robin ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú proudly called "the highest-rated tournament of its kind held on U.S. soil" - perhaps one of our readers can either confirm or counter this?The results so far:
| Round 1 Akobian 1-0 Perelshteyn Becerra 1/2 Onischuk Stefansson 1/2 Harikrishna Kaidanov 0-1 Kritz Mikhalevski 1-0 Miton | Round 2 Onischuk 1/2 Mikhalevski Harikrishna 1/2 Becerra Kritz 1/2 Perelshteyn Kaidanov 1-0 Stefansson Miton 1/2 Akobian | |
| Round 3 Stefansson 0-1 Kritz Akobian 1/2 Onischuk Mikhalevski 1/2 Harikrishna Becerra 1/2 Kaidanov Perelshteyn 1/2 Miton | Round 4 Onischuk 1-0 Perelshteyn Kritz 1/2 Miton Harikrishna 1/2 Akobian Kaidanov 0-1 Mikhalevski Stefansson 1/2 Becerra |
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA
The participants of the second edition of SPICE Cup
The playing hall with round 1 being played
Akobian - Perelshteyn
Becerra - Onischuk
Kaidanov - Kritz
Mikhalevski - Miton
Stefansson - Harikrishna
...all fighting for this beautiful cup
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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