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Strong Rapid Tournament Takes Off in Riga

Strong Rapid Tournament Takes Off in Riga

PeterDoggers
| 8 | Chess Event Coverage

This weekend a (very) strong rapid tournament will be held in Riga, Latvia: the Latvian Railway Open. Besides the leading Latvian grandmasters (including co-organizer Alexey Shirov!), a number of big names from abroad will be present such as Vasilly Ivanchuk, Vladimir Malakhov, Sergei Zhigalko, Viktor Bologan and Loek van Wely.

The Latvian Railway Open takes place 28-30 March, 2014 at the Latvian Railway History Museum in Riga, Latvia. As one of the strongest open rapid tournaments of the world, the tournament is another example of the "chess in museums" trend!

According to Wikipedia the Latvian Railway Museum was established on August 30, 1994 and contains more than a thousand items, documents and photographs related to railway communications and signalling equipment, tools and instruments, uniforms and badges. It is located in the center of the Latvian capital.

The tournament will be held in three groups A, B and C. Tournament A is a 14-round Swiss with the time control 15 minutes for each player plus 6 seconds increment per move. The first round is on Friday, March 28th at 17.30 hours; the last round on Sunday the 30th at 15.00 hours. The total prize fund is 11,150 Euros with 1400 Euros going to the winner of th A tournament. 

The current list of participants, as given on Chess-Results, has the following top 30:

No. Title Name FED Rtg
1 GM Malakhov Vladimir RUS 2777
2 GM Shirov Alexei LAT 2742
3 GM Ivanchuk Vassily UKR 2722
4 GM Zhigalko Sergei BLR 2704
5 GM Fedoseev Vladimir RUS 2681
6 GM Bologan Viktor MDA 2680
7 GM Van Wely Loek NED 2679
8 GM Lysyj Igor RUS 2675
9 GM Kovalenko Igor LAT 2653
10 GM Fridman Daniel GER 2649
11 GM Navara David CZE 2648
12 GM Azarov Sergei BLR 2646
13 GM Alekseev Evgeny RUS 2635
14 GM Aleksandrov Aleksej BLR 2616
15 GM Ehlvest Jaan USA 2612
16 GM Shimanov Aleksandr RUS 2582
17 GM Sumets Andrey UKR 2577
18 GM Shariyazdanov Andrey RUS 2570
19 GM Sulskis Sarunas LTU 2562
20 GM Sveshnikov Evgeny LAT 2554
21 GM Al-Modiahki Mohamad QAT 2547
22 GM Fedorov Alexei BLR 2547
23 GM Gleizerov Evgeny RUS 2545
24 GM Oparin Grigoriy RUS 2545
25 GM Miezis Normunds LAT 2544
26 GM Stupak Kirill BLR 2537
27 GM Ulibin Mikhail RUS 2515
28 GM Kulaots Kaido EST 2505
29 IM Krivonosov Oleg LAT 2490
30 GM Kovalev Vladislav BLR 2488

You can watch the games live here.

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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