Local heros Bluvshtein and Porper surprise at Canadian Open
Especially when a number of elite grandmasters come and play, it's nice to have a local winner and this is what happened at the Canadian Open, where GM Mark Bluvshtein and IM Edward Porper, both from Canada, finished shared first with a fine score of 7.5/9, ahead of Adams, Ni Hua, Shirov and other strong GMs. Bluvshtein was declared winner on tiebreak.
This year's Canadian Open took place July 11-19 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was one big group, with 203 participants, and clearly one of the strongest open Swisses in the calendar because among the participants were 2700+ players Alexei Shirov, Ni Hua and Michael Adams. Besides, many top Canadian players participated and eventually two of them finished at the top of the standings.Rounds 5-9
From our previous report on the first five rounds we already know that that there wasn't a clear favorite in Edmonton this year. Besides, FM Theo Hommeles from the Netherlands and Canadian IM Edward Porper had started quite well, as both were sharing the lead with many GMs.Hommeles can be satisfied with a a fine tournament in which he defeated IM Samsonkin (2612) and GM Ni Hua (2702), to find himself playing for first place against Mark Bluvshtein in the last round. However, the Dutchman lost this game and so he couldn't repeat what his compatriot Hans Ree had done back in 1971: finishing shared first at the Canadian Open in Vancouver (together with Boris Spassky). After learning about this success of his arch-enemy Ree, the famous Dutch writer Jan Hein Donner wrote an article titled “Does Canada exist?” :-) as was also pointed out by Rini Luyks in the comments.
Ni Hua (2701) vs Theo Hommeles (2412): 0-1!
IM Edward Porper is already rated 2501 and played far stronger than that
GM Mark Bluvshtein (2598), proud winner of the Canadian Open 2009
Candian Open 2009 | Final Standings
You can replay all games here at the Monroi Tournament Website.
Photos & videos © Zeljka Malobabic of MonRoi, published with permission.
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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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