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Morozevich on 6 out of 7

PeterDoggers
| 0 | Chess Event Coverage
Due to his recent succes at the M-Tel Masters, Ivanchuk seemed to be taking over the number 3 spot in the world rankings but Morozevich is not letting him: the Russian is on a smashing 6 out of 7 in Sarajevo, a performance just below 3000!

This year's Bosna tournament, a six-player double round-robin with an average Elo of 2694, is held from May 22 until June 2, 2008 in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina. We left the tournament after the third round, when Morozevich had taken the lead with a fine attacking game against Movsesian.

In the fourth round he was held to a draw by Dominguez after a sharp but short tactical Sicilian, and then Moro went on winning his next three White games. In the fifth round he defeated Timofeev in an instructive equal-coloured bishop's ending with an extra pawn, which was blocked by the opponent's king. Perhaps Black was able to hold it but Morozevich's persistence lasted until move 80 at which point Timofeev had to resign.



The sixth round was played yesterday (Wednesday was a free day). Morozevich beat Dutch GM Ivan Sokolov, who's huge experience couldn't compensate for his lack of play recently. Or should we just say that Morozevich is simply too strong now for the Bosnia-born GM?



The tournament looks a lot like the M-Tel Masters, but the organizers didn't copy one thing from the Bulgarians: instead of switching rounds, the second half mirroring the first with reversed colours, and as a result Morozevich has been playing the white pieces three times in a row now.

Today Morozevich won quite easily again, this time against Predojevic from an Exchange Slav. As always, it didn't seem too dangerous for Black but in the hands of the Russian top grandmaster this line is often a lethal weapon. While Black was directing everything to White's e-pawn, his own d-pawn became much weaker.

Perhaps he had missed that 30...Rd7 is answered by 31.Rxc6!. In the complications that followed White was always in control.



The other participants are killing each other's chances to win the event, with many draws among them, and so Moro is already leading with one and a half points. It should be noted that Dominguez, who had won the Capablanca Memorial in his own country before going to Sarajevo, again plays an excellent tournament.

[TABLE=293]

street The tournament is announced in the street

speelzaal The stage where the games are played

twogroups Group A is situated behing group B perdo_movs Predojevic-Movsesian

predo_doming Predojevic-Dominguez

timo_ivan Timofeev-Sokolov

doming_moro Dominguez-Morozevich

sokolov-movsesian Sokolov-Movsesian moro-predo Morozevich-Predojevic


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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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