Maghsoodloo Wins World Junior Title With Stunning Performance

Stunning the chess world with a 9.5/10 score before losing in the last round, Iranian GM Parham Maghsoodloo won the World Junior Championship in Gebze, Turkey. Aleksandra Maltsevskaya of Russia won gold in the girls section.

The World Junior Championships (open and girls) were held September 5-15 in the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Gebze, Turkey. The Open section had players from 59 different federations, including 25 GMs and 40 IMs and no less than 30 players rated above 2500.

The top four junior players in the world did not participate: Wei Yi (China, 2742), Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland, 2739), Vladislav Artemiev (Russia, 2703) and Jeffery Xiong (USA, 2651). That made Parham Maghsoodloo (Iran, 2649) the top seed in Turkey, and he fulfilled the promise splendidly.

He was the only player on a perfect score after five rounds. After a friendly draw with his compatriot GM Alireza Firouzja, Maghsoodloo scored another four straight wins! This way he secured tournament victory with a round to spare, when he was already two points ahead of the pack.

In round five his opponent was close to a draw, but in time trouble he avoided a perpetual when Maghsoodloo suddenly played a devastating bishop check: 

In round nine it was GM Awonder Liang who was given the task to slay the mighty Iranian, but the American soldier failed as well. Maghsoodloo in fact played a beautiful, textbook positional game and gave his opponent no chance whatsoever.

What a performance by GM Parham Maghsoodloo! | Photo: Official website.

Only in the last round Maghsoodloo was beaten. He lost to the Russian rising star GM Andrey Esipenko, who nonetheless missed the podium on tiebreak (partly because of an early loss to an IM from Kazakhstan).

Eventually the Indian GM Abhimanyu Puranik won the silver medal, while bronze went to Russian IM Sergei Lobanov. The latter had a spectacular final-round game, where he had to look for a not a second, but a third queen to place on his board!

Two more Iranian GMs did well and gained Elo points: Amin Tabatabaei (fifth place) and the aforementioned Firouzja (10th place). It will be interesting to see how the Iranian team will do in the upcoming Olympiad, after their excellent performance two years ago, when they finished on a shared 11th place.

2018 World Juniors | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

The girls section saw a slightly surprising winner: the untitled Aleksandra Maltsevskaya of Russia, rated 2234. Georgian WIM Nino Khomeriki had been leading early on as the only player on 6/6, but then she lost to WIM Dinara Dordzhieva and later to FM Bibisara Assaubayeva.

Dordziheva drew her game in the final round, while Maltsevskaya won. She edged out WGM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova of Uzbekistan on tiebreak; Khomeriki won the bronze medal.

The medal winners in the girls section. | Photo: Official website.

2018 World Juniors | Girls, Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Games via TWIC.

The world junior championship is held since 1951. Former winners include Boris Spassky (1955), Anatoly Karpov (1969), Yasser Seirawan (1979), Garry Kasparov (1980), Viswanathan Anand (1987), Levon Aronian (2002), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2003, 2005) and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2009).