Aeroflot Open – the guessing game

The 9th Aeroflot Open is taking place from February 9th to 18th, 2010, for the fifth year in succession in the tourist complex Izmailovo Hotel Gamma-Delta, where most of the participants also stay. The prize sum is EUR 180,000, including prizes for the World Blitz Qualification Tournament. Four Open Tournaments (A1, A2, B and C) are made up according to the rating of the participants. The A1 tournament has players with a rating of 2550 or higher.

Time controls: for tournament A1 and A2 it is 40 moves in 100 minutes, then 20 moves in 50 minutes, finally 15 minutes for the remaining moves, with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move one. For tournaments B and C: 90 minutes for the whole game with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move one.

Report from the 9th Aeroflot in Moscow

For a while the two Vietnamese GMs were in the lead, now they are joined by three Russian players, with 19-year-old Ian Nepomniachtchi at the helm. All have 5.0/7 points and 2700+ performances. Half a point behind them are eleven GMs from many different countries: 19-year-old Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Etienne Bacrot from France; Arkadij Naiditsch from Germany; Ivan Cheparinov of Bulgaria; Wesley So from the Philippines; Krishnan Sasikiran from India; Zhou Jianchao from China.

Standings after seven rounds

We encounter the first female player at place 48: Chinese GM Hou Yifan, who will turn sixteen – tomorrow, Wednesday! Yifan is playing at exactly her expected rating of 2590. Behind her the Kosintseva sisters from Russia, then Lela Jasvakhishvili of Georgia, whose 2.5/7 is from the point of view of performance ten points more than her FIDE rating. Marie Sebag of France is having a bad tournament.

Picture gallery

The official web site has provided many nice pictures for you to browse through – many sharp, well framed and with good colour balance. But all uncaptioned. Basically it is some dude playing chess, then another dude, then a gal, then another dude. But as we said: nice pictures. So here's the plan: we publish a selection and ask you to identify the players. Please send us the names of any players you recognise – and any little snippets of information you may have on them. All this should happen today, Tuesday. We will replace our slightly needy attempts at humor below each picture with the information we receive from you, dear readers.

Player 01: the headscarf should provide a pointer [ Correct answer: WIM Shayesteh Ghader Pour]

02: To sleep, perchance to dream? [WFM Tamara Cheremnova, B Group]

03: You can do a position search in the PGN to identify her [Valerya Rjanova, C Group]

04: Quite obviously we must look towards the east

05: Now isn't that the Berlin Wall specialist? [GM Evgeny Bareev, who prepared the Berlin
for the 2000 World Championship match for Vladimir Kramnik against Garry Kasparov]

06: An enrichment for international women's chess [Iranian WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan]

07: Hint: her first language is Telugu [Indian IM Harika Dronavalli]

08: "He moved the knight to a6 – what should I do now?" [Fidan Aydin qi Aghasiyeva,
whose birthday is on the 19th February, says Michael Yeo of Minstead, England]

09: We could have sworn this was a no-no

10: Well, he has mastered the GM glare [GM Stanislav Novikov]

11: Seriously, we did not reverse the head in Photoshop. [IM Ashwin Jayaram of India,
who identified himself and wrote: "By the way, I can stretch my hands all the way backwards!"]

12: I find my strategic moves by stimulating my parietal lobe [Vladimir Belous]

13: Cameron? In Moscow, playing chess? Nah, very unlikely. [WGM Anastasia Savina]

14: The execution is elegant – but are the moves just as good?

15: Orange for the kingside, blue for the queenside? [IM Mikhail Mozharov]

16: But then again, is anyone ever satisfied with their position? [Gerd Jahrsdoerfer, C Group]

One of our favourite chess people: Boris Vasilievich, a.k.a. Spassky

The perennial arbiter Geurt Gijssen, Holland

The king of chess organisers Alexander Bakh

Links Official tournament site All games from Tournament A1 in zipped PGN Results of Tournament A2 – Tournament B – Tournament C A selection of games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse PGN games. New and enhanced: CB Light 2009!