Ragger Best On Tiebreak At Politiken Cup
GM Markus Ragger won this year's Politiken Cup in Helsingor, Denmark. The 27-year-old Austrian grandmaster had the best tiebreak in a group of 10 players finishing on 8.0/10.
The Politiken Cup, one of the strongest opens this summer, took place July 25-August 2 at the Konventum Helsingør in Denmark. No fewer than 431 players participated, making it the largest Danish international chess event ever.
Before we start looking at the tournament, the following video begs to be embedded here. It's kind of a preview but makes a great video by itself, wonderfully made by Rune Friborg of Outray Chess.
GM Ilya Smirin went off to a flying start as the only player to score 6.0/6, but then the fun was over. The Israeli player lost three games in a row, and couldn't beat a 2100-player in the final round. A tournament with two faces for Smirin.
IM Axel Smith, known for the book Pump Up Your Rating, scored his second GM norm when he beat GM Ilya Smirin of Israel in the ninth round.
The tournament ended in a huge tie for first place. Ten players scored eight points, and it was GM Markus Ragger of Austria who turned out to have the best tiebreak.
In round four he was involved in a very sharp but theoretical game with Smith, who decided to step aside from the path that Vishy Anand had chosen some months ago:
Ragger had some winner's luck in his game with Swedish GM Tiger Hillarp Persson, who must have had the famous game Cohn-Rubinstein on his mind when he resigned...in a drawn position! First, as a reminder, that classic game you must have seen before:
And then look what happened in Hillarp Persson-Ragger:
Besides Smith, 17-year-old IM Jan-Christian Schröder of Germany scored a GM norm and 16-year-old Ravi Hari (2243) of England scored an IM norm.
2015 Politiken Cup | Final Standings (Top 20)
| Rk | SNo | Name | Fed | Rtg | Pts | TB1 | TB2 |
| 1 | 2 | Ragger Markus | AUT | 2688 | 8.0 | 58.5 | 55.75 |
| 2 | 6 | Nisipeanu Liviu-Dieter | GER | 2654 | 8.0 | 56.5 | 54.00 |
| 3 | 3 | Hammer Jon Ludvig | NOR | 2677 | 8.0 | 55.5 | 52.50 |
| 4 | 1 | Fressinet Laurent | FRA | 2707 | 8.0 | 54.0 | 51.75 |
| 5 | 16 | Hillarp Persson Tiger | SWE | 2563 | 8.0 | 53.5 | 50.50 |
| 6 | 5 | Shankland Samuel L | USA | 2656 | 8.0 | 53.0 | 52.25 |
| 7 | 13 | Maze Sebastien | FRA | 2575 | 8.0 | 52.5 | 50.75 |
| 8 | 11 | Marin Mihail | ROU | 2579 | 8.0 | 51.0 | 50.25 |
| 9 | 14 | Hansen Sune Berg | DEN | 2571 | 8.0 | 50.0 | 48.50 |
| 10 | 12 | Kunin Vitaly | GER | 2576 | 8.0 | 49.0 | 48.25 |
| 11 | 28 | Schroeder Jan-Christian | GER | 2461 | 7.5 | 57.5 | 51.50 |
| 12 | 8 | Rakhmanov Aleksandr | RUS | 2626 | 7.5 | 55.5 | 48.00 |
| 13 | 9 | Naroditsky Daniel | USA | 2622 | 7.5 | 55.0 | 49.50 |
| 14 | 15 | Timman Jan H | NED | 2566 | 7.5 | 52.5 | 46.00 |
| 15 | 10 | Grigoriants Sergey | RUS | 2594 | 7.5 | 51.0 | 46.75 |
| 16 | 21 | Aagaard Jacob | DEN | 2506 | 7.5 | 50.0 | 46.25 |
| 17 | 24 | Hector Jonny | SWE | 2485 | 7.5 | 48.5 | 43.75 |
| 18 | 26 | Fernandez Daniel Howard | ENG | 2472 | 7.5 | 48.5 | 43.25 |
| 19 | 7 | Jones Gawain C B | ENG | 2647 | 7.5 | 48.0 | 42.75 |
| 20 | 25 | Delorme Axel | FRA | 2484 | 7.0 | 53.0 | 43.25 |
(Full final standings here.)
The festival had many side events, including lectures by GMs Jan Timman, Mihail Marin and Jacob Aagaard. An in-depth interview with Marin was published on the tournament website and is definitely worth watching:
Chess.com columnist GM Daniel Naroditsky won the Oddset Blitz tournament held on Friday evening, July 31. He beat GM Gawain Jones in the final. The first prize was 5,000 Danish kroner (roughly U.S. $750).
Here's their first of two games in the final:
The semi-finalists of the blitz: L-R Gawain Jones, Nils Grandelius,
Daniel Naroditsky, Sergey Grigoriants. | Photo Sigfred Haubro.
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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