Aeroflot Open 2013

Over the course of many years, the Aeroflot Open in Moscow established itself as one of the biggest and strongest Open tournaments in the world.

Sadly, the 2013 edition of the event held from 12-17 February had a completely revised format. Instead of a 9-round Open Swiss at standard time controls, we were "treated" to a confusing mix of rapid and blitz events, and no classical chess at all.  A very strange decision by the organisers.

The event started with a 9-round rapid (15 minutes plus 10 second increment) qualifying competition of more than 250 players, with 32 players advancing to the next stage. Many of the last round games were agreed drawn in just a few minutes as leading players ensured their top-32 qualification places.  In some games, as little as 3 moves were played.  At the opposite extreme, one round 6 encounter lasted 194 moves!

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The 32 qualifiers then played two rounds of a rapid KO competition (2-game mini-matches) to reduce the field to 8 survivors: Gata Kamsky, Anton Korobov, Le Quang Liem, Pavel Eljanov, Rauf Mamedov, Sanan Sjugirov, Dmitry Frolyanov and Aleksandr Shimanov.

These players were joined by 8 invited stars: Anatoly Karpov, Alexander Grischuk, Peter Svidler, Dmitry Andreikin, Sergey Karjakin, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Wang Hao and Shahriyar Mammadyarov for 4 more rounds of rapid KO matches.

The eventual winner was top seeded Sergey Karjakin, but only after his final opponent Alexander Grischuk lost on time in a completely won position in a final Armageddon game.

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The separate blitz tournament (3 minutes plus 2 second increment) was won by Ian Nepomniachtchi with a score of 15½/18.  The top scorers were:

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The official website coverage (in Russian only) is here. The best source for surviving game scores is probably the ever-reliable TWIC.