30th Cappelle-la-Grande under way

The 30th edition of the Cappelle-La-Grande Open is underway from March 1st to March 8th at the Palais des Arts et Loisirs (Palace of Arts and Leisure) in Cappelle-La-Grande, France. It is a nine-round Swiss open played at the rate of 40 moves in 90 minutes plus 30 seconds per move, followed by 30 minutes plus 30 seconds per move for the rest of the game. The tournament has a 30 thousand Euro prize fund, with 1st - 3000 Euros, 2nd - 2000 Euros, 3rd - 1500 Euros, etc. and many prizes by category and age.

Everything ready for the start!

The playing hall looks crowded but it's not hard to navigate through it

The tournament is very attractive for top players because of the excellent conditions provided by the organizers, who have been able to secure many top players including a 2700 to participate in the event despite the competition in the schedule. The Reykjavik open will start tomorrow while the European Chess Championship, a qualifier for the World Cup, is just playing its first round in Yerevan.

The top boards are in their own stage, and getting up here is a task in itself for any player

After three only three rounds there are only seven players with a perfect 3.0/3. The top seed, Ding Liren from China, was dinged half a point by Papin, a strong grandmaster himself, on the third round.

Lagarde is one of France's top cards in this tournament. On the right, Ding Liren against Papin

The event is absolutely massive at nearly 600 players all in the same section. The tournament is not a consistent fight of grandmasters vs. amateurs because if their use of accelerated pairings, although it is sometimes hard to predict parings because of this.

Standings

Bd.		White		Res.	Black
1	[3]	FIER Alexandr	2595		GUPTA Abhijeet	2630	[3]
2	[3]	JOVANIC Ognjen	2526		GANGULY Surya Shekhar	2623	[3]
3	[3]	MARTYNOV Pavel	2352		VOVK Andrey	2605	[3]
4	[3]	MAIOROV Nikita	2520		DING Liren	2717	[2,5]
5	[2,5]	TIMOSHENKO Georgy	2531		ITURRIZAGA Eduardo	2645	[2,5]
6	[2,5]	SUMETS Andrey	2628		KVEINYS Aloyzas	2530	[2,5]
7	[2,5]	DANIN Alexandre	2606		ULIBIN Mikhail	2491	[2,5]
8	[2,5]	GUREVICH Mikhail	2574		HASANGATIN Ramil	2494	[2,5]
9	[2,5]	ROMBALDONI Axel	2518		KOVACEVIC Aleksandar	2572	[2,5]
10	[2,5]	PIORUN Kacper	2570		BAILET Pierre	2477	[2,5]
11	[2,5]	PAPIN Vasily	2515		BURMAKIN Vladimir	2568	[2,5]
12	[2,5]	CHERNYSHOV Konstantin	2504		PETKOV Vladimir	2566	[2,5]
13	[2,5]	VISHNU PRASANNA. V	2462		SPRAGGETT Kevin	2557	[2,5]
14	[2,5]	DRASKO Milan	2460		BRODSKY Michail	2554	[2,5]
15	[2,5]	KHARITONOV Alexandr	2554		BARBOSA Evandro Amorim	2459	[2,5]
16	[2,5]	DUMITRACHE Dragos-Nicolae	2453		MAZE Sebastien	2545	[2,5]
17	[2,5]	HEBERLA Bartlomiej	2544		HAUB Thorsten Michael	2449	[2,5]

Replay select games from the top boards

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Photos by Alexandre Feryn

Links

Official tournament site

The games will be 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.

Advertising

Books, boards, sets: Chess Niggemann

Alejandro Ramirez Grandmaster Alejandro Ramirez has been playing tournament chess since 1998. His accomplishments include qualifying for the 2004 and 2013 World Cups as well as playing for Costa Rica in the 2002, 2004 and 2008 Olympiads. He currently has a rating of 2583 and is author of a number of popular and critically acclaimed ChessBase-DVDs.