Politiken Cup: Eljanov wins, Heine Nielsen & Svidler celebrate Larsen 75
With a score of 8.5/10 Pavel Eljanov finished clear first at the 2010 Politiken Cup in Helsingør, Denmark. Two Peters, Denmark's number one Heine Nielsen and Russia's number four Svidler, celebrated Bent Larsen's 75th birthday with several matches.The Politiken Cup took place July 31-August 8 in Helsingør (Elsinore), 40 kms north of Copenhagen. The town is mostly known for being the setting in one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, Hamlet. (In the beautiful Kronborg Castle still every year Hamlet performances take place and the tour guides always remind the tourists with a smile that Shakespeare himself never set a foot in Denmark.) The main event was a 10-round Swiss, but there were many side events, such as a simul and lectures.Top favourite in the open tournament was Pavel Eljanov, who recently scored his best career performance by winning the final FIDE Grand Prix in Astrakhan (and who wrote a nice, personal article about it in the last New in Chess Magazine). It's a rare thing to see a top 10 player in a big Swiss, because it involves a big risk: the chance to win rating points is much smaller than to lose them. Amateur chess players usually worry far too much about their rating, but these top players have a very good reason to do that, since that 4-digit number next to their name directly influences their income in the form of invitations for big tournaments.Eljanov must have been feeling confident, and he proved himself right by winning the tournament with 8.5/10, half a point clear of the field. He did win a few rating points more (5.8 to be exact) and climbed from 8th to 6th in the virtual world rankings.The following game was a spectacular victory for the tournament winner:
27.Rxg7+!! Kxg7 28.Qe7+ Kg8 29.Bd3 Rd7 (29... Qg5 30. Bxf6) 30.Bxf5 Rxe7 31.Bxc8 Kg7 32.Bh3 and with an extra pawn and the bishop pair the ending was completely won. 
This year's Politiken Cup included a celebration of the 75th year of Bent Larsen. Peter Svidler and Peter Heine Nielsen played a 6-game rapid match (4.5-1.5 to Svidler) and two blitz matches. In the first match Larsen's opening 1.b3 was obligatory and Svidler won 7-3. The normal blitz match was drawn 5-5.
Three matches between Peter Heine Nielsen and Peter Svidler were played
Selection of games
Game viewer by ChessTempoThe games of the Heine Nielsen-Svidler matches were recorded and posted on YouTube. Here's one example:[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"223","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","height":"349","width":"580","style":""}}]]You can watch all videos here.
The playing hall in Helsingør
GM Mikheil Mchedlishvili
GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly
GM Maxim Rodshtein
The winner, Pavel Eljanov, now 6th in the world on the live list
Team members at the NH Tournament that starts tomorrow in Amsterdam: Peter Heine Nielsen and Peter Svidler, who seem pretty warmed up after having played a total of 26 games against each other
Peter Svidler gave a 20-board simul in the Copenhagen Central Station on July 30th, scoring an undefeated 17-3.
Peter Heine Nielsen gave a lecture about the Anand-Topalov match in this year, where he, like Ganguly, was a second of the World Champion - on the screen you can recognize the Hilton Hotel in Sofia where the Anand team stayed
A lecture by GM Jacob Aagaard on attacking chess
Photos © Thomas Larsen, Politiken Cup
Links
- Official website
- Games in PGN: Politiken, Larsen Rapid, Larsen 1.b3 Blitz, Larsen Blitz via TWIC
