Hasselbacken Open ends in glory

by Albert Silver
5/11/2016 – Dozens of GMs, hundreds of players, it was a fitting event to celebrate 150 years of chess passion. The tournament saw it all, with tales of glory, and others of woe. At the very top was Dmitry Andreikin, the no.1, who justified his seed by taking first, together with Indian Adhiban who was second on tiebreak. Not to mention the last round when an 11-year-old smashed a GM.
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Photos by Lars AO Hedlund

The elegant playing hall thanks to the main sponsor, the Hasselbacken hotel

The tale of the tournament was in many ways one of last-round glory. The first and foremost was that of the top-seed Dmitry Andreikin, former World Cup finalist and Candidate, who was also the only 2700 player in the field. It is true that several others were former colleagues, such as Zoltan Almasi, Ilia Smirin, and of course Alexei Shirov, but at the moment he stood alone above the rest. This also has the unfortunate result of painting a big fat target on his back, challenging all other players to make a name for themselves at his expense, but he showed he was up to the task.

Nothing was less clear however, and it bears pointing out that after eight rounds, ten players stood tied with 6.5/8. With so many contenders, even a victory would still require a dose of luck to take first , but in the end, only two players pulled that off: Andreikin and Adhiban.

The Russian faced a tough challenge, playing black against Borki Predojovic, rated 2654 FIDE, but he took control of his fate and finished in beauty.

Predojovic - Andreikin

Black to play and win

The deserved winner, Dmitry Andreikin, with his daughter

Indian GM Baskaran Adhiban also gave it his all, and played a bold game against Victor Mikhalevski, sacrificing the exchange in the middlegame to accelerate his attack.

Baskaran Adhiban - Victor Mikhalevksi

[Event "Hasselbacken Open 2016"] [Site "Stockholm SWE"] [Date "2016.05.08"] [Round "9.4"] [White "Adhiban, Baskaran"] [Black "Mikhalevski, Victor"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "D70"] [WhiteElo "2663"] [BlackElo "2516"] [PlyCount "59"] [EventDate "2016.04.30"] 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. f3 d5 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. e4 Nb6 6. Nc3 Bg7 7. Be3 O-O 8. Qd2 e5 9. d5 c6 10. h4 cxd5 11. exd5 N8d7 12. h5 Nf6 13. hxg6 fxg6 14. O-O-O Bd7 15. Kb1 Rc8 16. Nh3 e4 17. d6 exf3 18. gxf3 Na4 19. Nxa4 Bxa4 {While the engines prefer the very sane 20.Rc1 here with a significant advantage, White chooses a more aggressive and direct approach:} 20. Ng5 $1 {Although strong in its own right, the exclamation point is for panache. You have to love a player who refuses to back down.} Bxd1 21. Qxd1 {Since Qb3+ cannot be stopped, Black's challenge is to try to find a defense or semblance of one.} Qa5 22. Qb3+ Kh8 {This can only be the result of panic.} ({The curious thing is that one would have thought the point of Qa5 was to answer with} 22... Qd5 23. Qxd5+ Nxd5 {But perhaps he changed his mind even though he was somewhat committed already? It's true that} 24. Bh3 $1 Rce8 25. Be6+ Rxe6 26. Nxe6 Nxe3 27. d7 $1 {doesn't offer much hope, but nor does the move in the game.}) 23. Bd3 Nh5 24. Nxh7 {Elementary.} Rxf3 (24... Kxh7 {leads to} 25. Qe6 $1 Rf6 26. Qxc8) 25. Ng5 Rf5 26. Qe6 Qd5 27. Rxh5+ gxh5 28. Nf7+ Kg8 (28... Rxf7 29. Qxd5) 29. Qxc8+ Kxf7 30. Qxf5+ 1-0

Baskaran Adhiban played aggressive, enterprising chess and reaped the
rewards, taking second on tiebreak, tied with Andreikin on points

In the group of players with 7.0/9, the leader and third place was Ilia Smirin

Sebastien Mazé was going strong until round seven when he lost to...

... compatriot Vladislav Tkachiev. Both finished with 7.0/9.

GM Axel Bachmann was the best player from South America. The
Paraguayan scored 7.0/9 and finished 12th.

IM Liang Awonder had a rough start with 2.0/4, but managed to recover
and ended with 7.0/9 with five straight wins, though he still lost a bit of Elo.

Samuel Sevian finished on 6.5/9, but since he played no fewer than six
GMs rated over 2620 in the process with no losses, he added 14 Elo to
his rating and broke 2600 himself.

Eric Thorn was the unsung hero of the event, and the local member
of the Stockholm Chess Club, rated only 2204, scored a full-fledged
IM norm to the delight of his club members.

11-year-old FM Nihal Sarin from India made waves of his own after finishing
with a 2401 performance and powerful win over GM Rozentalis. Below is his
recorded analysis in the post-game conference. Be sure to check it out!

 

Above is the video of the round nine commentary. Start it and it will jump directly to the analysis
by 11-year old FM Nihal Sarin, who shows his win over GM Rozentalis (starts at 5:01:15)

GM Jorden van Foreest also finished with 7.0/9, ending in 9th place

Father and son playing in the analysis area

Checking for blunders with the computer

"Oops!"

Following the action

IM Dan Cramling, brother of the famous Pia Cramling

Dmitry Andreikin with his family

Many thanks to photographer Lars Hedlund, author of all the portraits seen here, for his diligence and effort to label all his images and allow media to put a name to the many faces.

Solution to position: Black played the not-so-obvious 1...Re2!! and White resigned. If 2.Rxe2 f3+ 3.Kg3 fxe2 the pawn will queen, and if 2.Rd1 for example, then 2...e3 and the knight on f2 is lost. Black could play 1...e3 immediately but this allows White to give his knight for two pawns with 2.Nxe3 fxe3 3.Rxe3+ and still prolong the struggle.

Final standings

Rk SNo   Name FED Rtg Pts  TB1   TB2   TB3 
1 1 GM Andreikin Dmitry RUS 2736 7.5 43.5 5 6.0
2 6 GM Adhiban B. IND 2663 7.5 42.5 4 6.0
3 5 GM Smirin Ilia ISR 2665 7.0 45.5 5 5.0
4 3 GM Almasi Zoltan HUN 2682 7.0 44.5 5 6.0
5 16 GM Maze Sebastien FRA 2617 7.0 44.5 4 6.0
6 7 GM Tkachiev Vladislav FRA 2660 7.0 42.5 5 5.0
7 8 GM Sethuraman S.P. IND 2658 7.0 42.5 4 6.0
8 10 GM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi IND 2648 7.0 42.0 4 5.0
9 25 GM van Foreest Jorden NED 2551 7.0 41.5 4 6.0
10 2 GM Shirov Alexei LAT 2686 7.0 40.5 4 6.0
  28 GM Greenfeld Alon ISR 2541 7.0 40.5 4 6.0
12 13 GM Bachmann Axel PAR 2621 7.0 40.0 5 6.0
13 39 IM Liang Awonder USA 2410 7.0 34.0 4 6.0
14 12 GM Mareco Sandro ARG 2625 6.5 44.0 4 6.0
15 19 GM Sevian Samuel USA 2589 6.5 43.5 4 4.0
16 4 GM Postny Evgeny ISR 2673 6.5 42.0 5 5.0
17 30 GM Mikhalevski Victor ISR 2516 6.5 41.5 5 6.0
18 23 GM Vorobiov Evgeny E. RUS 2572 6.5 41.5 5 5.0
19 24 GM Burmakin Vladimir RUS 2554 6.5 41.0 4 5.0
20 21 GM Stefansson Hannes ISL 2581 6.5 40.5 5 5.0
  32 GM Smith Axel SWE 2503 6.5 40.5 5 5.0
22 18 GM Goganov Aleksey RUS 2591 6.5 40.5 4 6.0
23 31 GM Blomqvist Erik SWE 2516 6.5 40.0 5 6.0
24 17 GM Bok Benjamin NED 2605 6.5 40.0 4 5.0
25 11 GM Sasikiran Krishnan IND 2643 6.5 39.5 5 5.0
26 9 GM Predojevic Borki BIH 2654 6.5 38.5 4 5.0
  14 GM Onischuk Vladimir UKR 2620 6.5 38.5 4 5.0
28 22 GM Donchenko Alexander GER 2573 6.5 36.5 4 5.0
29 26 GM Tari Aryan NOR 2549 6.5 36.0 4 4.0
30 51 FM Nihal Sarin IND 2351 6.5 35.5 5 6.0
31 107   Isetoft Daniel SWE 2164 6.5 32.0 4 6.0
32 29 GM Libiszewski Fabien FRA 2520 6.0 42.5 4 4.0
33 15 GM Landa Konstantin RUS 2618 6.0 42.0 5 4.0
34 27 GM Urkedal Frode NOR 2549 6.0 42.0 4 5.0
35 48 IM Cramling Dan SWE 2354 6.0 40.0 5 5.0
  93   Thorn Eric SWE 2204 6.0 40.0 5 5.0

Annotation:
Tie Break1: Buchholz Tie-Breaks
Tie Break2: Most black

Click for complete standings

Links

The 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 a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.
Topics: Hasselbacken Open, Stockholm, Stockholm Chess Society, Sweden
Born in the US, he grew up in Paris, France, and after college moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He had a peak rating of 2240 FIDE, and was a key designer of Chess Assistant 6. In 2010 he joined the ChessBase family as an editor and writer at ChessBase News. He is also a passionate photographer with work appearing in numerous publications, and the content creator of the YouTube channel, Chess & Tech as well as the author of Typing Tomes, a powerful typing program.

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spleen74 spleen74 5/11/2016 06:07
Ops! '..Black could play 1...e3 immediately but this allows White to give his knight for two pawns with 2.Nxe3 fxe3 3.Rxe3+ and still prolong the struggle.'.

If Black plays 1..e3 White wins with 2. KxTd2
Bertman Bertman 5/11/2016 04:55
@psamant

Quite right, and the solution as been added now.
ulyssesganesh ulyssesganesh 5/11/2016 12:21
great performance by adhiban and other indians (sethuraman, gujarati...sasikiran.....who can forget sarin.....he reminds other prodigies!
Steven E DuCharm Steven E DuCharm 5/11/2016 11:36
Long reign Sarin
psamant psamant 5/11/2016 10:02
Predojovic - Andreikin: the critical move isn't mentioned at all in the article, only the diagrammed position is given. The move is ... Re2 whereby black forces the white rook away from e1. If white captures, f3+ forks white's rook and guarantees pawn promotion. After white's rook moves, 2... e3 gets white's knight.
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