Areshchenko wins the 3rd Porticcio Open 2016

Areshchenko wins the 3rd Porticcio Open 2016

By Sagar Shah

Early in the year 2016, Amruta (my wife) and I were watching a Bollywood movie named Tamasha. Fascinated by the beautiful scenic backdrop of the shots, on coming back home we immediately googled the place where the movie was shot. Corsica! It was at that moment that we made up our minds that this little island with 320,000 inhabitants was the place that we wanted to visit sometime in the near future!

Check out the video showing Bollywood in Corsica

Our lucky stars aligned pretty soon as we came to know about the 3rd Porticcio Open, which was going to be held in Corsica from the 25th of June to 1st of July 2016. We wrote to Leo Battesti, President of the Corsican chess federation, and Marie Paul Tomasi, organizer of the tournament, and were extremely happy when they invited us to be a part of their tournament.

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to France. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the Italian island of Sardinia. Mountains make up two-thirds of the island, forming a single chain. Corsica is also famous for being the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The place where the tournament was going to take place was in Porticcio, located south west region of Corsica. The best way to reach Porticcio is to take a flight from either Paris or Nice to Ajaccio and then a half-hour drive. A flight from Nice to Ajaccio takes only 45 minutes.

Here’s a video taken from the flight that gives you an idea about the landscape of Corsica. By the way it is called a "propeller" and is like a big fan. It is used on some planes instead of the regular jet engines.

Pitou Antoni (mother of Fiona Steil-Antoni) and Marie Paul Tomasi, President of Ajaccio chess association
and main organizer of the tournament greeted us with their smiles and warmth at the airport.

Can you recognize three top French grandmasters? They are Etienne Bacrot (black shirt) and the two guys behind him Fabien Libiszewski and Sebastien Maze. The pretty ladies are wives of Bacrot and Maze. The young boy standing in front of Etienne is his son Alexandre, who is eleven years old and has an Elo of 1984.

Club Marina Viva, the tournament venue and also where the players stayed.
The beach was just a stone’s throw away!

An aerial view of the Club Marina Viva (near the swimming pool) and the sea [photo Hotel web site]

The blue waters and the sound of the waves was a perfect way to relax before and after the game

In case you don’t like the beach, the swimming pool was equally tempting!

And so were the table tennis tables…

…and tennis buffs were not to be disappointed!

Club Marina Viva has two types of properties: (1) normal hotel rooms, and (2) fully equipped apartments. All the invited players were given apartments to stay in. Above is the entrance to the area where all the apartments are located.

Outside our apartment. The greenery, the constant chirping of birds and the fresh air – the perfect place for a chess player to rest and prepare. If there was something missing then it was a fast Internet connection. The one we had was not the best.

The apartment had a bedroom, a living room with a sofa, fully equipped kitchen
with microwave and refrigerator and well-furnished washrooms.

Taking a break from these enticing pictures, let’s focus on the chess for a bit! The 3rd Porticcio Open was a strong Swiss tournament with the participation of 15 grandmasters and seven International Masters. In all 106 players from 16 countries took part. Nine rounds were played at the rate of 90 minutes for the entire game, with 30 seconds increment from move one. Rounds began at 15.30 hours = 3:30 in the afternoon. There were five days with single rounds and two days of double rounds. The tournament witnessed the participation of some very strong players: Etienne Bacrot (2702), Viktor Laznicka (2668), Alexander Areshchenko (2667), Gawain Jones (2657), Nils Grandelius (2649), Sergei Zhigalko (2647), Edouard Romain (2641), Daniel Naroditsky (2634), Yuri Kuzubov (2632) and Sebastien Maze (2614).

One of the most important rules in the tournament was that the players were not allowed to offer draws. Yes, no 20 or 30 move rule –the entire game. Many of you must be aware of the Sofia rules. In fact this rule of no draw offer was first implemented in Corsica nearly 20 years ago by Leo Battesti. Veselin Topalov and his manager Silvio Danailov came to Corsica in 2004 and were fascinated by this rule. They decided to apply it to the super tournament MTel Sofia Masters in 2005. This is why it is widely known as the Sofia rule, but in fact it would not be inappropriate to call it the Corsica rule.

The event was keenly contested and this is reflected by the final standings. It was a six way tie between Areshchenko, Naroditsky, Sengupta, Zhigalko, Romain and Jones. In the end Areshchenko was adjudged the winner thanks to the better tiebreak score.

The top three finishers of the event: Alexander Areshchenko (center),
Daniel Naroditsky (right) and Deep Sengupta (left)

Final Standings (after nine rounds)

Alexander Areshchenko along with his wife Kateryna, were stranded at the Paris airport before the start of the event. His flight from Paris to Bastia had been cancelled. There was very little time left before the tournament began, so the Ukrainian grandmaster booked the next flight to Corsica. This meant that the Areshchenkos were set back by nearly 500 euros and came to the tournament in not such a great mood. But by the end of the tournament everything had changed. Alexander Areshchenko won the event and Kateryna won the best woman player award. Together they went back richer by € 3,300 (3000+300). Kateryna said after the tournament, “I love this place so much. I really don’t want to go back!”

Alexander and Kateryna Areshchenko made a clean sweep at the Porticcio Open. Areshchenko was also the winner in 2015, so he was successfully able to defend his title.

Areshchenko’s short and sweet speech on winning the title

Most of the grandmasters defeated their lower rated opponents. In order to accelerate ahead of others you had to win against fellow GMs. Areshchenko did this perfectly by beating the leader Nils Grandelius in the seventh round. One could say this was the most crucial game of the entire tournament as Grandelius was running away with the top spot with 5.5/6. The precision and perfection with which Alexander played this game is something to learn from.

Second placed Daniel Naroditsky is all smiles at the end of the tournament

A short chat that I had with a youngster from Corsica went something like this: Sagar: “You are really strong. You should work harder on chess and try to become the first grandmaster from Corsica.” Youngster: “Yes, I will try. My aim is to become like Daniel Naroditsky. Have a rating of 2650 and study in one of the best universities in the world.”

Truly, what Daniel has achieved is just phenomenal. Not only has he maintained a very high Elo which currently stands at 2634, making him the ninth strongest player in United States, but he is also a student at the prestigious Stanford University. This is one of the reasons why he hasn’t been playing much recently, but in Porticcio he was in top notch form. You only need to see his game against Viktor Laznicka to get a feel of how resourceful Daniel is.

Usually, in any decent tournament organized in any place on the globe you can find an Indian playing! And thanks to the chess boom in the country, the players tend to perform quite well. The Porticcio Open was no exception as GM Deep Sengupta played one of the best tournaments of his career.

Deep Sengupta of India finished third at the event

Deep Sengupta, who is employed by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), was very close to being clear first when he had a completely winning position against Nils Grandelius in the penultimate round. Being the birthday boy, it seemed like a perfect present for Deep. But things didn’t go so well and the game ended in a draw.

A last round draw against Daniel Naroditsky was sufficient for Deep to be the joint winner.
A seaside interview with Deep Sengupta!

Part II of the report will follow shortly with more details about places fourth to tenth,
some important endgame info, and interesting pictures.

Pictures by Amruta Mokal

Links Official tournament site Games in PGN (partially edited) You can use ChessBase or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.