Fressinet wins 22nd Sigeman Tournament

The 22nd annual Sigeman Chess Tournament took place in the classical Hipp Theater in central Malmo. This year's event was a round robin with six participants, who were an interesting mix of established players and rising stars, and of familiar faces and new ones. The visiting team consisted of former world championship candidate Jan Timman, French grandmaster Laurient Fressinet and Norwegian grandmaster Jon Ludvig Hammer. The home team consists of Nils Grandelius, who has become Sweden's strongest and most active chess player, new grandmaster Erik Blomqvist and international master Axel Smith. The time control was 100 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for the remaining moves with 30 seconds cumulative increment for each move starting from the first move.

IGM JLH vs IM AS was a Slav that ended after 42 moves in a relatively uneventful draw

Nils Grandelius had scored 0.5/3 so far, but won his first game in round four

Timman played most of the game a pawn down but defended successfully to a 93-move draw

Not exactly packed – the playing venue in the Hipp Theater

The main sponsor Johan Sigeman with IM Björn Ahlander in the commentary room

Swedish GM Tiger Hillarp Persson watching the action

The final decisive game, in which Axel Smith made one false king move

Allan Beardsworth sent us his comments on this game, as published on his chess blog, where he writes:

I hadn't been following the current Siegman tournament until I saw this article on ChessBase that Axel Smith was leading it. Axel is an IM who wrote the excellent Pump Up Your Rating, published by Quality Chess – one of those rare, really well written instructional books where you feel the author really wants to help his readers improve their chess. So, delighted for Axel, I logged onto Playchess to see how he had fared today, to see that he went down in flames against Nils Grandelius, one of the players he profiled in his book.

Final standings (after five rounds of play)

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN 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.