Edouard wins Dubai 2014 in exciting finish

16th Dubai Open Chess Championship It is the strongest Open tournament in the Middle East and one of the most popular chess events on the world calendar. The tournament, which ran from 7th-15th April, is held in the Dubai Chess and Culture Centre, which is the biggest than most modern dedicated chess club in the world. The event attracted 148 players from 39 countries, including 79 titled players. There were 38 GMs in the field, and the average rating of the tournament was 2214. The time control was one hour 30 mins + 30 seconds increment per move. The first prize for the event was US $10,000, with the total prize fund of $50,000.

Romain Edouard wins Dubai 2014

It promised to be a thrilling last round. The protagonist, GM Edouard Romain (2670), was half point ahead of his nearest rival, Indian GM Abhijeet Gupta (2630) with 7/8. But the Frenchman had a formidable opponent in the form top seeded Anton Korobov (2698) from Ukraine, while Abhijeet (6.5/8) faced GM Iturrizaga (2635) from Venezuela. The other four players on six points faced off against each other: Stevic Hrovje against Gawain Jones and Yuriy Kuzubov against Aleksandr Rakhmanov.

The best part about Dubai Open is that even the final round begins at the normal time of 17.30 in the evening. In almost all the other open tournaments the world over, the final game is played a few hours earlier than the previous rounds, so that the organizers can fit in the prize distribution ceremony on the same day. This results in the entire schedule of the players being disrupted. Many come to the board tired and half asleep. No wonder there are so many quick agreed draws in the last rounds of many tournaments.

But nothing of that sort happens at Dubai Open. Starting the last round at usual time and having the prize distribution ceremony on the next day, ensures great fighting chess. The organizers must be applauded for keeping up this tradition.

The top board game Korobov vs Edouard was going to be a bloody affair. After all, the aggressive Ukranian player was trailing by a full point and had the white pieces. He made his intentions clear from the start: to play for a complicated and tense struggle by going for the London System. Both players played logically until Romain made the very brave decision of sacrificing a pawn for his strong dark squared bishop as compensation. From that point onwards the course of the game was decided. White was trying to quell the black initiative, while Black tried to find creative ways to keep up his compensation. The game wasn’t flawless yet it was highly entertaining. Finally, Romain sacrificed an exchange and reached the below position. The following position just sums up the tournament Romain has been having.

At the end of the game White is an exchange up but has a weak king. Here he has his task cut out. Of all the possible moves only one move saves his position, and not only saves it but gives White a very tangible advantage. But Korobov, in time trouble, played the atrocious 32.Qe4?? one move later had to simply resign!

What would you call this? Champion's luck? It was some sort of a recurring theme for Edouard in this tournament that he had worse positions and he fought back and won them. But when something happens frequently we cannot take it as plain luck. The positions that Edouard created were quite messy. Combined with his fighting spirit and resourcefulness he was able to set up problems for his opponents which they couldn’t solve:

• Against Gupta he was totally lost, but when his opponent made a mistake and gave him a chance, he finished off the game.

• The same happened against Anuar Ismagembetov. The position was equal, but when the Kazakh player went wrong Romain delivered the coup de grace.

• With Akopian, he was on the backfoot but when he had a choice to accept a draw or to keep playing on, he chose the latter and was rewarded with the full point!

Calling it as plain luck might be just too naïve. High level of ‘practical play’ was on show by this year’s Dubai Open winner, who remained undefeated and scored 8.0/9, with a 2856 performance.

Once the final round game was won by Edouard, nothing else mattered. He was the champion irrespective of other results. But while the game was going on there was one player who had a very good chance of catching up with the leader. Abhijeet Gupta who was on 6.5/8.

Abhijeet Gupta vs Eduardo Iturrizaga was the other crucial last round encounter

Something went terribly wrong for the Indian GM, who was totally outplayed by his opponent. After 14 moves Black’s position looked cramped. He had to destroy the white centre. The right choice was to break it with 14…e5 but Abhijit chose 14…c5 and in the symmetrical position that arose on the board, he was simply run over by the white pieces. A perfect positional game by the Dubai blitz winner Iturrizaga, who will go back from Dubai with lot of fond memories!

Cool and composed, the Venezuelan GM Eduardo Iturrizaga Bonelli played
an excellent game in the final round

The pictures from the prize distribution and also the final standings will follow in the next article. But as of now we leave you with the information that GM Romain Edouard from France just got richer by US $10,000!

Picture from the tournament we site

Top final ranking (after nine rounds)

• Full results and lists available here

Video reports by Vijay Kumar

Round nine of the Dubai Open 2014 – a brief interview with Romain Edouard begins at 7:10 min

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN (courtesy TWIC) The games were broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.