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The 33rd Open de la Ville De Metz took place from April 20 to 26, 2015 in the city of Metz, France. The nine-round tournament was divided into two sections: Category A for players 1900 and above and Category B for players 2000 and below. Time controls: one hour and 30 minutes for 40 moves, 30 minutes added after that, and a 30 second increment from move one. Being a seven-day event meant there were two double round days and five days of single games. The prize fund of €10,000 with the first prize of €2500 was guarantte in case of 120 players participating in the A and B categories. As there were only 100 players (38 in A group and 62 in B) the prizes were reduced and the first prize of the ‘A’ category was revised to €2080. |
The beauty of Earth is that there so many different landscapes. The beauty of being a chess player is that you get to visit them while playing your favourite game. After the hot and arid terrain of the Middle East, Dubai, we (me and my wife) continued our journey westward. Boarding an Etihad airliner and travelling for nearly eight hours, we reached what is dubbed as the most romantic city in the world.
From the land of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world [image: Wiki], we travelled to…
… Paris, which hosts the Eiffel Tower, the most visited monument in the world.
You can use your mouse key to browse around
the Eiffel Tower in this Google Street View map.
Approach the tower and look up – that is what we did when we were
in Paris.
But our journey was not yet complete. Taking a TGV from Paris we covered the distance of 300 kilometres in an hour and reached a small city in the north eastern part of France which is located at the confluence of the Moselle and Seille rivers, near the borders of three different countries: Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany.
A train that can reach 574.8 kmh (or 357.2 mph)
– but unimaginatively named "Train à Grande Vitesse".
Seriously, "Train with Great Speed"? They couldn't come up with bullet
or lightening or something catchier?
The city is filled lush greenery, water bodies and historical structures
For the fear that I might lose myself in showing the readers the beauty of this city and forget about the tournament, I am going to reserve the pictorial impressions of Metz for the part II report. For now let us focus on the 33rd Open de la Ville De Metz.
The winner of the event: 24 years old, Vladimir Onischuk (2651) from Ukraine
To give you an impression of the hunger and the ambitions of this young Ukrainian, he won the tournament with a phenomenal score of 8.0/9, two points clear of his nearest rival, with a massive rating performance of 2844. If you thought that the competition at this tournament was easy, think again. From the 38 players who took part, 23 were rated above 2300. There were nine grandmasters, one woman grandmaster and nine International Masters.
The 2500+ club (left to right): GMs Sergei Azarov, Dmitry Svetushkin, Vladimir Onischuk, Nikita Maiorov, Andrey Vovk, Evgeniya Doluhanova, Evgeny Romanov, the main organizer Salvatore Centonze, IMs Dennis Wagner, Alexander Doncehnko, Matthias Blübaum and Jacek Stopa. (Picture by Pierre Becker)
What made Onischuk’s victory even more brilliant was the fact that he had lost the second round game to IM Jacek Stopa. From round three, the lad was unstoppable, scoring seven consecutive victories. His scalps included IM Alexander Donchenko, IM Sagar Shah, IM Dennis Wagner, GM Dmitry Svetushkin, GM Vladimir Epishin and GM Evgeny Romanov.
Vladimir Onischuk: the future hope of Ukrainian chess?!
Onischuk’s style of play is quite unusual. Unlike many of the youngsters of his age, Onischuk’s opening repertoire is pretty narrow. With the white pieces he often plays not the most ambitious setups, preferring solid lines like the Rossolimo against the Sicilian. With black he plays lines verging on the edges of dubiousness, like the Pirc against 1.e4 and 1…d6 or 1…g6 against the Queen Pawn Opening. That being said, opening is not where his strengths lie. It’s the middlegame and endgame. He calculates precisely, doesn’t get into time trouble and has superb technique. A look at his games from the Mega Database will assure you that once he gets a small edge he will most certainly convert his advantage, even against strong GMs. His performances of second place at the Capelle-La-Grande 2015 and third at Al-Ain Classic 2014 testify to his strength. With a rating of 2651 and gaining many Elo points from this event, we can safely predict an extremely bright future for Onischuk.
IM Dennis Wagner (2544) from Germany finished second with 6.0/9
This is definitely the last ChessBase report about “IM” Dennis Wagner – henceforth it will be GM! He might already have received his grandmaster title at the FIDE meet which is being held in Chengdu, China from the 26th-29th April. Dennis started the tournament with great energy. With wins over Azarov, Epishin and Stopa in rounds two, three and four he had already opened up a point’s lead over the rest. But then he met his nemesis in Vladimir Onischuk in round six. A grandiose battle took place between the two, and Dennis was kind enough to annotate this game in great depth for us, in spite of being on the losing side. Please pay close attention to the double queen “sacrifice” on back to back moves on the g4 square in the middlegame by the young German! Also on show was the resourcefulness of Onischuk and his will to win.
A great fighting game between two talented youngsters
After his loss to Onischuk, Dennis lost a further game to Romanov before striking back in the last round to beat the top seed Andrey Vovk (2654) and finish second.
German Matthias Blübaum (2586) played consistently, remained unbeaten and finished third
GM Stanislav Savchenko (2511) from Ukraine finished fourth [picture by Pierre Becker]
Stanislav Savchenko (not to be mistaken with Boris Savchenko) has not been playing much these days due to family commitments, but he was a strong player with a peak rating of 2590 in 2007. In his heydays he has drawn with absolute in elites like Anand, Svidler, Short, van Wely, etc., and that too in classical time controls.
IM Jacek Stopa (2537) from Poland, another player
who will be
receiving his GM title in a day or two, scored 5.5/9 and finished fifth
Jacek Stopa can be proud of the fact that he was the only player in the event who could inflict a defeat on the eventual winner, Vladimir Onischuk. This game has been annotated for us by Jacek in a very special way. You can play through the first 30 moves on the chess board, up to the diagram position, and then follow the nine minutes of instruction from the Polish grandmaster where he explains, in impeccable English, the thought process behind his next 17 moves.
– More from the Metz Open in a second report to follow soon –
