Naiditsch wins Montreal International
On Monday, August 24th Arkadij Naiditsch decided to drive from Dortmund to Amsterdam and back, to visit the NH Chess Tournament for a day. Only three days later he played his first round in Montreal, Canada and yesterday he won the strong, 12-player round-robin with 7.5/11.The 10th Montreal International took place August 27th - September 7th in Montreal, Canada. This year it was a 12-player round-robin with Etienne Bacrot (FRA, 2721), Alexander Onischuk (USA, 2699), Arkady Naiditsch (2697), Alexander Moiseenko (UKR, 2682), Sergei Tiviakov (NED, 2674), Yuri Shulman (USA, 2648), Varuzhan Akobian (USA, 2626), Anton Kovalyov (ARG, 2572), Mark Bluvshtein (CAN, 2558), Sebastien Maze (FRA, 2546), Thomas Roussel-Roozmon (CAN, 2487) and Vinay Bhat (USA, 2473).Our first report was about the first four rounds, after which GMs Etienne Bacrot, Arkadij Naiditsch and Anton Kovalyov were sharing the lead with 3/4. Three rounds later Bacrot and Naiditsch were topping the standings with 5/7, a point ahead of Bluvshtein, Mazé and Kovalyov. 
It was clear that fight for first place would be fought out between the two grandmasters, also taking into account that Onischuk and Tiviakov didn't seem to be in top shape. Naiditsch and Bacrot were sharing the lead until the last round, but yesterday Naiditsch defeated Bhat in the only decisive game of the round, to take clear first - Bacrot drew with Kovalyov and had to be satisfied with clear second.Ironically, in the 6th round the tournament winner lost against Akobian in what was easily the shortest, decisive game of the tournament. With Black, Naiditsch played the Exchange Variation of the Queen's Gambit in Lasker style but this didn't really work out well, as you can see in the selection of games below. French GM Sebastien Mazé did well with a 2685 performance; Canadian IM Roossel-Roozmon however didn't come close to a GM norm, for which he needed 5.5 points.
Selection of games rounds 4-11
Game viewer by ChessTempoLinks
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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