ECCC Eilat: Saint-Petersburg takes the sole lead

The 28th European Club Cup 2012 is taking place in Eilat, Israel, as a seven-round Swiss from October 11 to 18 (no free day). The rounds starts at 15:00 local time. The time controls are 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one. The zero tolerance rule (6.6a of the FIDE Laws of Chess) will be applied: any player who arrives at the chessboard after the start of the session loses the game.

Round five report

In Open section the derby between two leaders, Saint-Petersburg Chess Federation and Tomsk-400, finished on favor of Petersburg, thanks to decisive victories by Peter Svidler and Nikita Vitiugov against Ruslan Ponomariov and Viktor Bologan respectively. As a result, after five rounds Saint-Petersburg Chess Federation has taken the sole lead in the tournament.

Peter Svidler and Leinier Dominguez (left) playing for Saint-Petersburg

SOCAR Azerbaijan is making their way to the top after beating the G-Team Novy Bor. Veselin Topalov and Gata Kamsky scored important victories to gain the lead for their team in the match. Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Tomashevsky and Alexander Moiseenko from Economist-SGSEU Saratov outplayed their opponents from Gros Xake Taldea, and with the other three games being drawn, Saratov gained an important victory and shares second place with two rounds to go.

Ugra managed to win the tough match against OSG Baden-Baden e.V. Arkadij Naiditsch defeated Alexei Shirov on the second board, but his victory didn’t affect the final outcome, as Ugra members Anton Korobov and Alexei Dreev succeeded to win their games against Peter Heine Nielsen and Jan Gustafsson.

Obiettive Risarcimento vs Oslo Schakselskap with a rare female player in the open
section: WGM Olga Dolzhikova, 2286, who drew GM Michele Godena, 2526

It was absolutely impossible to predict the outcome of the match between SHSM-64 and Rishon Le-Zion. Despite the rating advantage on every board on favor of Russian team the situation looked more promising for Israeli Club. At the beginning Anish Giri made a draw on the second board while Alexander Riazantsev lost the game against Tal Baron. An extraordinary accident, which turned to be decisive for the fate of the match, happened in the game Leko-Alterman later on. In a slightly worse endgame Peter Leko proposed a draw, but his opponent Boris Alterman made a move which turned to be not a good one. When the Israeli GM realized he had blundered an exchange he tried to accept the proposed draw, but Peter Leko preferred to continue playing and converted his advantage into a full point. The victory of Vladimir Potkin on the last board and heroic defense of Boris Grachev not only saved the match but brought an important victory to Russian team.

Top pairing results from round five

Top current rankings

• Full results of all matches from this round + full rankings after five rounds

Selection of games

Women's section

In the Women's section Monte-Carlo confidently won against Chigorin Club and keeps the lead in the tournament. Anastasia Bodnaruk drew her game against Hou Yifan while the others could not hold the pressure. Ugra defeated Rishon Le-Zion with 3,5-0,5 score and placed second only one point behind of Monte-Carlo. AVS managed to win the first match in the tournament against Israeli club Ashdot with a 3:5-0:5 score. The only draw in the match was made between Masha Klinova and Antoaneta Stefanova.

Mika (left) defeated SHSM-Nashe Nasledie to climb to the third rank in the table.

• Rankings after five rounds

Selection of games

Posters in the playing hall by Nir Slav

All pictures by Anastasiya Karlovich

Watch the live games of the next round here:

Links Official tournament site Selection of games in zipprd PGN: Open – Women The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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