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Romain Edouard First in Dubai With 8.0/9

Romain Edouard First in Dubai With 8.0/9

PeterDoggers
| 4 | Chess Event Coverage

Romain Edouard of France won the 16th Dubai Open with a tremendous score: 8.0/9, good for a 2856 performance rating. He won 22 rating points, getting pretty close to 2700. The Frenchman won the cheque of $10,000, while Yuriy Kuzubov (Ukraine) and Eduardo Iturrizaga (Venezuela) shared the second and third prizes.

All photos courtesy of the Dubai Open

After three rounds five GMs and one FM were tied for first place in Dubai, as was reportedGM Romain Edouard of France, GM Axel Bachmann of Paraguay, GM Abhijeet Gupta of India, GM Eduardo Iturrizaga of Venezuela and GM Anuar Ismagambetov of Kazakhstan as well as FM Hatim Al-Hadarani of Yemen.

In round 4, Edouard and Bachmann drew on board one, and so did Ismagambetov and Iturrizaga on two. Gupta was the “lucky one” to get paired against the FM, and won quite a nice game against him:

Abhijeet Gupta

The very next day one of the top matches in the tournament took place, and it was a dramatic one. Gupta was outplaying his French opponent from the opening, but then, getting closer to the time control, he missed several chances for a big advantage. After move 40 the Indian got confused, and lost a game he should never have lost.

In the same round Vladimir Akopian had a nice finish. Can you play like him?


That was nice, but the next day Akopian was less sharp. He got an advantage in the middlegame against Edouard, but allowed his opponent to reach a complicated ending. And then he blundered big time.

In the same round there was a typical opening mistake, untypically played by a 2660 grandmaster!

Meanwhile, Gupta got back to half a point behind Edouard as his winning attempts in a drawn position were rewarded:

Round 7 saw 7 draws at the top, so let's skip that and move on to round 8. Edouard played an excellent game:

So did Gupta:

With one round to go, Edouard was on 7.5/8 and had a full point lead over Gupta. A draw was enough for the Frenchman, who didn't shy away from complications in the final round:

Gupta collapsed and lost without a chance against Iturrizaga.


And so Edouard won the 
Sheikh Rashid bin Hamdan Al Maktoum Cup and the first prize of $10,000, having survived several worse positions. Was he lucky? Yes. But he certainly had the strongest nerves at the decisive moments, and he didn't play for a draw in the last round. Perhaps it's time to start calling the 23-year-old Frenchman Mr Cool.


Dubai Open 2014 | Final Standings (Top 30)

Rk. SNo Name FED Rtg Pts. TB1 TB2 TB3
1 3 GM Edouard Romain FRA 2670 8 20691 0 51,5
2 10 GM Iturrizaga Bonelli Eduardo VEN 2635 7 20242 0 48,5
3 8 GM Kuzubov Yuriy UKR 2639 7 20098 0 48
4 17 GM Andriasian Zaven ARM 2603 6,5 20248 0 52
5 12 GM Gupta Abhijeet IND 2630 6,5 20178 0 52
6 16 GM Stevic Hrvoje CRO 2607 6,5 20049 0 50
7 4 GM Istratescu Andrei FRA 2667 6,5 19747 0 47
8 14 GM Petrosian Tigran L. ARM 2627 6,5 19325 0 47,5
9 7 GM Jones Gawain C B ENG 2650 6,5 19260 0 46,5
10 1 GM Korobov Anton UKR 2698 6 20607 0 54
11 24 GM Brkic Ante CRO 2568 6 20416 0 48,5
12 27 GM Ghaem Maghami Ehsan IRI 2556 6 20372 0 48,5
13 39 GM Shyam Sundar M. IND 2481 6 20319 0 47,5
14 47 IM Georgiadis Nico SUI 2421 6 20261 0 47
15 15 GM Rakhmanov Aleksandr RUS 2610 6 20045 0 51
16 6 GM Balogh Csaba HUN 2656 6 19984 0 49
17 22 GM Bogner Sebastian SUI 2587 6 19955 0 47
18 28 GM Jankovic Alojzije CRO 2554 6 19900 0 48,5
19 2 GM Akopian Vladimir ARM 2674 6 19893 0 51
20 31 GM Rahman Ziaur BAN 2513 6 19713 0 49
21 26 GM Kotsur Pavel KAZ 2557 6 19642 0 50
22 13 GM Mchedlishvili Mikheil GEO 2628 6 19596 0 46,5
23 11 GM Solak Dragan TUR 2635 6 19580 0 48
24 21 GM Lalith Babu M.R. IND 2594 6 19447 0 46
25 9 GM Amin Bassem EGY 2637 6 19392 0 47
26 18 GM Iordachescu Viorel MDA 2601 6 19355 0 47
27 33 GM Kostenko Petr KAZ 2506 6 19192 0 45
28 25 GM Stojanovic Mihajlo SRB 2568 6 18873 0 45,5
29 35 GM Ismagambetov Anuar KAZ 2493 5,5 20560 0 55,5
30 54 IM Ahmadinia Ebrahim IRI 2353 5,5 20363 0 49,5

Full standings here

The Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Al Maktoum Cup, more known as the Dubai Open, took place 7-17 April, 2014 at the Dubai Chess & Culture Club in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In the 16th edition 148 participants from 39 countries played, including 38 GMs and 8 WGMs, 16 IMs, 3 WIMs, 10 FMs and 5 WFMs. Games via TWIC.

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PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

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.”

In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!


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