2nd Stars Cup in Iran

Iran Stars nearly equal World team

It seems that despite Iranian chess federation's problem paying its debts to FIDE for the Women's World Championship this year, the Iranian chess engine is going forward full power. Thanks to its appeal as a strong educational tool, and a means to earn social recognition (top sportsmen in Iran receive media attention and coverage) chess has made its way into the Iranian community and almost every household.

Even the most optimistic proponents of developing chess in an undeveloped country with a ten-year absolute break from international scenes could not envision such a rise. The break in question refers to the 1979 revolution in Iran, shortly after which playing chess was banned in public and considered forbidden by senior clerics because it was associated with gambling. However, in 1988, Iran’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, lifted the ban. Thanks to the “internet of things” and accessibility of open source materials in chess as well as neighbouring ex-soviet states with a rich chess culture like Armenia and Azerbaijan, Iran’s chess federation now has six grandmasters and two GM-elects above 2500, all but one are below thirty years old.

Gilan Province hopes for a GM title, IM Khalil Mousavi who has shown his capacity and talent, notably beating Alexy Shirov last year in an open tournament in Iran! 

More interestingly, four of these players are below twenty. In addition, Iran's women, by no small stretch, are challenging the men's meteoric rise with two IMs and four WGMs. This is in spite of the fact that before the year 2000 women's chess didn’t receive in a fraction of budget men used to get in terms of training and participation.

Despite all these successes, chess in Iran faces its difficulties. As one of the first GMs and chess professionals who spent the first 26 years of his life in Iran, I still observe similar, albeit fewer, problems standing in the way of young Iranian players, coaches, enthusiasts and families who are willing to do everything within their power for their children.

Jobava is a true chess elevator. After solid results in Siegmen and a fantastic comeback in the European Championship, he simply ended up scoring -2 and losing a lefty 24 points. Here he is held comfortably by Iran's representative in the coming World Cup GM Pourramezanali.

As for Pourramezanali, he is definitely on fire. His consistent results in recent tournaments had made him a contender to become Iran's number 1! 

One of these many challenges is access to international chess. Although the Iranian Open team at the World Chess Olympiad finished 16th and won the Category B prize, players in the national team hardly take part in strong events where they get a chance to cross swords with experienced world class players.

To fill in this gap, the Gilan province chess association and Iranian Chess Federation joined forces with the Anzali Trade-Industrial Free Zone Organization and formed the “Stars Cup”, a Scheveningen event where the country's top players get a chance to play strong players from all over the world. The 1st edition of this event was a 10 vs 10 Scheveningen, while the second edition this year had a strange format where eight Iranian players faced seven strong and experienced GMs with an average rating of 2655! The reason for this format is unbeknownst to your author but I would venture to guess some visa issue or last-minute problem prevented a chance for an 8 vs 8 match.

The Magnificent Seven of this event were: GM Baadur Jobava (Georgia), GM Loek Van Wely (Netherlands), GM Alexy Shirov(Latvia), GM Lazaro Bruzon (Cuba), GM Eltaj Safarli (Azerbaijan) GM Ivan Sokolov (Netherlands), GM Wen Yang (China) comprising a list of players from three different continents all with prolific and enviable resumes, most notably one of the most fearsome attackers of the late 90s and a 'theoretical' world championship contender Alexei Shirov.

Chess has its own ironies with respect to world politics: Bruzon, a Cuban, played in the World Open in the United States and went right after to Iran to play in the Stars cup.

The Iranian guns in this event were: GM Parham Maghsoodloo, GM Pouya Idani, GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, GM Amirreza Pourramzeanali (zonal champion with a seat in the coming World Cup), GM-elect Amin Tabatabaei (soon a GM), Iran's chess phenomena 14 year-old IM Alireza Firouzja (with two GM norms), GM-elect Masoud Mosadeghpour (with four GM norms!) and IM Khalil Mousavi.

The experienced “Stars” had only one returning GM: Ivan Sokolov who is also Iran's national team coach.

IM Mosadeghpour, twice Asian U20 champion, lost a classical match against Mr 'Fire on the Board' ex-world championship contender GM Alexey Shirov

Once again, the world stars won against the Iranian youngsters, but with a less convincing result than last year: last year all ten matches finished in favor of the world team whereas this year the Iranian squad managed to win two matches and draw one out of seven rounds.

Also, just like last year, the highest performance belonged to Iran's number one GM Parham Maghsoodloo. Parham, who absolutely loves chess, plays non-stop one tournament after another, and scored 4½/7 with a fantastic 2734 performance. He also elevated the record for the best head-to-head result in classical chess among Iranian players, dismantling the current European vice-champion, flamboyant Baadur Jobava from Georgia who went on to suffer a terrible performance losing 24 Elo points without scoring any wins!

Here are some select moments:

Baadur Jobava - Parham Maghsoodloo (annotated by GM Elshan Moradiabadi)

Solid and safe against the Indian openings: Play the Fianchetto

The King''s Indian and Grunfeld are notoriously tricky and theoretical openings. The Fianchetto variation avoids the main lines which Black players enjoy, and goes for a small but safe edge. GM Nick Pert played the Fianchetto variation for over 20 years, and at the time of recording was unbeaten with White since November 2011!

The Iranian Prodigy Alireza Firouzja: Aged 13 and Iran ex-champion! With two GM norms under his belt, and already crossed 2500 after this event, this young talent needs more of these tournaments to shine. Here we see him how he takes down Dutch No.2 Loek Van Wely with the black pieces.

Alexei Shirov - Alireza Firouzja (annotated by GM Elshan Moradiabadi)

Crosstable of match

(click image for full size)

Photos: chessstarscup.ir

Links

• Official tournament site
• All games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)

You can use ChessBase 14 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.