2010 World Youth Chess Championship – Final report

2010 World Youth Chess Championships

Playing hall of the world championship

Nearly 1400 players, from no fewer than 87 countries, have gathered in the 2010 World Youth Chess Championships in picturesque Porto Carras, Greece, to compete for the titles of World under-8, under-10, under-12, under-14, under-16, and under-18 titles for both boys and girls. The organizers have a very high quality website, which we recommend seeing, including a ton of beautiful pictures (they literally have over 1000 so far), and daily videos depicting scenes with traditional Greek music in the background.

The event crowned a number of surprise winners and names to look out for. In the Boys Under-18, easily the least expected result was the impressive victory by American FM Steven Zierk, ranked 26th with a 2391 rating, yet, who not only took sole first with 9.5/11 and a point ahead of the field, but even scored a GM norm a round in advance, and a final performance of 2723.

WYCC Boy's Under-18 champions: Steven Zierk (US, gold), Samvel Ter-Sahakyan
(Armenian, silver), Nils Grandelius (Sweden, bronze).

In second was Armenian GM Samvel Ter-Sahakyan, who had been tied with Zierk in the last round, but lost his game. Swedish GM Nils Grandelius took bronze.

Azerbaidjani Narmin Kazimova won the gold in the Girl's Under-18, ahead of top-seed
Peruvian Deysi Cori who took silver, and Vietnamese Hoang Thi Nhu, bronze.

The Girl's Under-18 was also a tense affair with top-seed Peruvian prodigy WGM Deysi Cori, rated 2368, losing to Azerbaidjani Narmin Kazimova in the 7th round, who took the lead, after which she went guns ablazing after the gold, with four straight wins. Unfortunately for her, Kazimova's win had been no fluke, and though they ended on the same final 9.0/11, the Azerbaijani's tiebreak gave her the gold.

Azerbaidjani Kanan Azar Izzat took sole first and gold in the Boy's Under-14 ahead
of Indian Khoslan Shiven (silver), and Russian Kiril Alekseenko (bronze).

Another truly remarkable result was that of Azerbaidjani Kanan Azar Izzat (2139 Elo) in the Boy's Under-14, who literally started rated 35th in a field that included Hungarian GM Richard Rapport (2523), and two IMs yet took the gold with 9.0/11 after a first round loss no less.

Boy's Under-10 winners: Jason Cao (Canada, gold), Jeffrey Xiong (US, silver),
Abhimanyu Puranik (India, bronze), and Bhaskar Gupta (India, 4th).

Another surprise was the Boys Under-10, which included top-seed American Samuel Sevian, rated 2105, yet which was won by unrated Canadian Jason Cao, who had a remarkable campaign throughout.

Boy's Under-12 winners: Wei Yi (China, gold), with Kayden Troff (US, silver) and
Jan-Krysztof Duda (Poland, Bronze).

The Boy's Under-12 was hard fought between American Kayden Troff and Chinese Wei Yi, both of whom played remarkably well throughout, and entered the last round tied for first. Wei Yi won his final game with ease, but Troff was unable to overcome his final opponent and had to settle for a draw and silver, with a well-earned gold for the Chinese lad. This wasn't the only Chinese success, as their Girl's Under-8 representative, Li Yunshan fairly whitewashed her section with an unforgiving 10.5/11.

Results for the event:

Boys

Girls

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse PGN games. New and enhanced: CB Light 2009!

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