Pavel Eljanov Wins Politiken Cup
The Politiken Cup was a 10-round Swiss Open held in Copenhagen, Denmark from 31 July - 8 August.
In a similar fashion to the recent British Championships, one player was rated around 150 Elo points above the rest of the field and dominated to win the event.
Current world #8 ranked player Pavel Eljanov (pictured) scored 8.5/10 to live up to his top billing. 27-year old Eljanov is in great form, having won the last FIDE Grand Prix in Astrakhan, and is a clearly player to watch!
The top of the standings looked like this:
| 1 | Eljanov, Pavel | UKR | 2755 | 8.5 |
| 2 | Rodshtein, Maxim | ISR | 2609 | 8.0 |
| 3 | Landa, Konstantin | RUS | 2598 | 8.0 |
| 4 | Macieja, Bartlomiej | POL | 2639 | 8.0 |
| 5 | Meier, Georg | GER | 2648 | 7.5 |
| 6 | Danielsen, Henrik | ISL | 2512 | 7.5 |
| 7 | Hector, Jonny | SWE | 2584 | 7.5 |
| 8 | Rasmussen, Allan Stig | DEN | 2510 | 7.5 |
| 9 | Ganguly, Surya Shekhar | IND | 2655 | 7.5 |
| 10 | Mchedlishvili, Mikheil | GEO | 2625 | 7.5 |
| 11 | Hansen, Sune Berg | DEN | 2595 | 7.5 |
| 12 | Portisch, Lajos | HUN | 2539 | 7.5 |
| 13 | Baklan, Vladimir | UKR | 2638 | 7.5 |
| 14 | Cmilyte, Viktoria | LIT | 2527 | 7.5 |
| 15 | Brynell, Stellan | SWE | 2495 | 7.5 |
| 16 | Kovchan, Alexander | UKR | 2571 | 7.5 |
In a side event in honour of the legendary 75-year old Danish GM, Bent Larsen, the current Danish #1, Peter Heine Nielsen took on the ever-popular Russian GM, Peter Svidler. The unusual challenge featured a 6-game rapid match, a 10-game blitz match and a 10-game Larsen Opening themed blitz match.
Peter Svidler was a convincing winner overall, taking the rapid match 4.5-1.5, winning the themed blitz 7-3, and drawing the blitz 5-5.
Unusually, many of the games of the match were filmed and are available to watch on YouTube. An example is below.
