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Mamedyarov Starts With Swinging Attack As Aeroflot Open Takes Off

Mamedyarov Starts With Swinging Attack As Aeroflot Open Takes Off

PeterDoggers
| 3 | Chess Event Coverage

The resurrected Aeroflot Open took off on Friday in Moscow. Top seed GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov got off to a flying start, crushing GM Boris Savchenko in just 19 moves.

Sponsored by Russia's airline Aeroflot, this open tournament has been held 11 times, all between 2002 and 2012. It disappeared in 2013 and did not return in 2014. Now the Aeroflot Open is back, as strong as ever.

The tournament, a nine-round Swiss, takes place March 27 - April 5 in Hotel Cosmos in northeast Moscow. With 1,700 rooms it is one of the biggest hotels in the Russian capital. That follows a tradition: the first few Aeroflot Opens were held in the famous Rossiya Hotel on Red Square, which had 3,200 rooms (but doesn't exist anymore)!

The format is similar to previous years, with rating groups A, B and C. The total prize fund is 140,000 Euro, which includes the prizes for a blitz tournament that will be held on April 5.

The A group's first prize is a massive 18,000 Euros. On top of that, the winner will be invited for the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund, to be held 27 June - 5 July, 2015.

Officials at the opening ceremony: chief arbiter Geurt Gijssen, organizer Alexander Bakh
and RCF Executive Director Mark Gluhovsky. | Photo Boris Dolmatovski.

The A group is for players rated 2549 or higher (with some exceptions allowed by the organizers), which means that the top players face strong opponents from the very start. This didn't prevent GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who was also the top seed in Reykjavik two weeks ago, from winning quickly:

 

Mamedyarov interviewed the night before the first round. | Photo Boris Dolmatovski.

GM Vladimir Potkin had a similar start. From an English Opening he got a tremendous attack that included a Rxf7 sacrifice:

 

GM Vladimir Potkin

Not all favorites won their first games. For instance, GM Ian Nepomniachtchi and GM Paco Vallejo were held to a draw by IM Stanislav Bogdanovich and GM Sergey Grigoriants respectively.

On a lower board Dutch IM Jorden van Foreest managed to beat GM S.P. Sethuraman:

GM Lu Shanglei, who made headlines last year when he beat GM Magnus Carlsen at the World Blitz Championship in Dubai, defeated the higher rated GM Maxim Matlakov:

 

GM Lu Shanglei

GM Richard Rapport won another game in his typical, inimitable style. Can we still compare it to the chess played at coffee houses? Is chess still being played at coffee houses in the 21st century? Sure, but these days we see that kind of chess more in open tournaments it seems!

 

GM Richard Rapport

2015 Aeroflot Open | A group | Round 1 results

Title Name Rtg Result Title Name Rtg
GM Mamedyarov Shakhriyar 2756 1 - 0 GM Savchenko Boris 2581
IM Bogdanovich Stanislav 2581 ½ - ½ GM Nepomniachtchi Ian 2714
GM Rapport Richard 2709 1 - 0 IM Bluebaum Matthias 2576
GM Grigoriants Sergey 2573 ½ - ½ GM Vallejo Pons Francisco 2708
GM Inarkiev Ernesto 2706 1 - 0 GM Jumabayev Rinat 2572
GM Esen Baris 2571 0 - 1 GM Korobov Anton 2694
GM Matlakov Maxim 2693 0 - 1 GM Lu Shanglei 2570
GM Yilmaz Mustafa 2570 0 - 1 GM Sasikiran Krishnan 2682
GM Fedoseev Vladimir 2674 1 - 0 GM Sandipan Chanda 2569
GM Stupak Kirill 2567 ½ - ½ GM Grachev Boris 2673
GM Petrosian Tigran L. 2671 1 - 0 GM Kotronias Vasilios 2565
GM Oparin Grigoriy 2562 ½ - ½ GM Sjugirov Sanan 2669
GM Kovalenko Igor 2661 1 - 0 GM Can Emre 2555
GM Mozharov Mikhail 2555 ½ - ½ GM Mamedov Rauf 2658
GM Zvjaginsev Vadim 2658 1 - 0 GM Gabuzyan Hovhannes 2553
IM Wagner Dennis 2549 ½ - ½ GM Motylev Alexander 2653
GM Khismatullin Denis 2650 ½ - ½ GM Ernst Sipke 2530
  Predke Alexandr 2530 0 - 1 GM Adhiban B. 2646
GM Kobalia Mikhail 2632 1 - 0 GM Antipov Mikhail Al. 2529
GM Al-Sayed Mohammed 2511 ½ - ½ GM Iturrizaga Bonelli Eduardo 2630
GM Khairullin Ildar 2630 1 - 0 IM Svane Rasmus 2509
GM Gundavaa Bayarsaikhan 2505 0 - 1 GM Dubov Daniil 2627
GM Salgado Lopez Ivan 2627 1 - 0 GM Batchuluun Tsegmed 2499
GM Idani Pouya 2496 0 - 1 GM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi 2625
GM Sethuraman S.P. 2623 0 - 1 IM Van Foreest Jorden 2493
IM Sanal Vahap 2487 ½ - ½ GM Bukavshin Ivan 2618
GM Tregubov Pavel V. 2617 ½ - ½ GM Ankit R. Rajpara 2477
GM Vishnu Prasanna. V 2477 ½ - ½ GM Anton Guijarro David 2614
GM Khalifman Alexander 2613 1 - 0 IM Kuderinov Kirill 2465
IM Tran Tuan Minh 2455 0 - 1 GM Ponkratov Pavel 2613
GM Potkin Vladimir 2605 1 - 0 FM Tabatabaei M.Amin 2448
IM Swayams Mishra 2440 ½ - ½ GM Salem A.R. Saleh 2603
GM Goganov Aleksey 2598 ½ - ½ IM Kovalevskaya Ekaterina 2438
  Korobkov Piotr 2423 ½ - ½ GM Shimanov Aleksandr 2594
GM Svetushkin Dmitry 2592 1 - 0   Asgarizadeh Ahmad 2412
WGM Abdumalik Zhansaya 2379 0 - 1 GM Bok Benjamin 2587

 

 


Previous report:

PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

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.”

In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!


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