Tragedy overshadows Acropolis Open

The Acropolis Open 2009 was won by Borki Predojevic on tiebreak after a 4-way tie with Hristos, Banikas, Ioannis Papaioannou and Atanas Kolev, who all finished on 6.5/9. However, the tournament will mostly be remembered for a tragedy in the first round, when a participant died of a hart attack during his game.

The 24th International Chess Tournament "Acropolis 2009" was held August 10-18 in Chalkida, Greece - about 70 km north of Athens. It was a co-organisation of the Greek Chess Federation and the Chalkida Chess Academy ‘Palamedes of Evia’.

Among the participants were 27 Grandmasters, 19 International Masters, 11 FIDE Masters, 10 Women Grandmasters, 8 Women International Masters, 2 Women FIDE Masters and many other strong chess-players from 24 countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Belarus, Bulgaria, England, Georgia, Greece, India, Israel, Italia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, FYROM, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela). Unfortunately the tournament started with a tragic incident – a well-known figure in Greek chess, Nikolaos Karapanos, passed away due to a heart attack. The incident took place during his game with IM Dan Zoler – in fact in a winning position for Karapanos. His opponent happened to be a doctor and he tried his best to keep his opponent in life but in vain.

The press officer of the tournament, GM Efstratios Grivas, wrote in the bulletin of round 1:

As Nikolaos was my long-time good friend I do not feel like commenting anything else about this round and the only annotated game today will be his life’s last effort. Of course Nikolaos will not ‘continue’ playing, but he will be always in our heart and mind. His opponent, Dan Zoler, decided to withdraw as he could no longer felt like playing chess...

Karapanos-Zoler Acropolis (1) 2009 [GM Grivas, E]

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