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.
Montreal International 2009 | Final Standings
Selection of games rounds 4-11
Game viewer by ChessTempoLinks