Potkin Wins In Aix-les-Bains

Long-time leader Vladimir Potkin of Russia took the European Individual Chess Championship title on tie-breaks after taking a quick draw with Judit Polgar in the final round.

That turned out to be enough for Potkin to take first place thanks to a superior tie-break score (the first tie-break score was the TPR - tournament performance rating).

With the top top 23 finishers qualifying for the Chess World Cup later this year, nerves were shredded among the players in the last round as some took safe draws and other pushed for wins, depending on how safe they thought they were.

According to The Week In Chess, reports from the scene suggest that there was great confusion as to who had qualified. The organisers' calculation of the TPR involved ignoring the highest and lowest individual game rating performances for everyone and their scores in those games.

Another quirk was that since three players among the top 23 have already qualified for the World Cup by other means (Svidler, Potkin and Mamedov), it appears that the final places 24-26th have also qualified.

Notable casualties included the young talents Ian Nepomniachtchi and Fabiano Caruana.

The final top standings (qualifiers in red):

Two games from the final round are below. All games are available at the official website.