Italian Spring Tour: Young players dominate

The Grandiscacchi ("Great Chess") organisation has been running tournaments and tournament series in various locations in Italy for several years. These include the Vergani Cup, which was played for the first time in 2017, the Cattolica Chess Festival since 2019, the Bassano Chess Tour 2020-21 and a few more tournaments. The Spring Tour 2022 will feature four events, three in the Adriatic resort of Cattolica and one in Bassano del Grappa (Vicenza province) in northern Italy.

The venue in Cattolica is the Hotel Kursaal. The Cattolica Open was held here in the first week of March. After nine rounds seven players shared first place, but Narayanan had the best tie-break and won the tournament. Praggnanandhaa was second.

Afterwards three 9-round Swiss tournaments with a smaller number of participants were played, two so-called "GM-Mix" tournaments and one "IM-Mix" tournament. In the GM-Mix tournaments "A" and "B", young players met experienced grandmasters.

The Elo-favourite in the GM Mix A, an 18-player tournament, was the young Polish IM Szyamon Gumularz (2539).

But after nine rounds, the 19-year-old Grandmaster Arseniv Nesterov from Russia and the French IM Julien Song shared first with 6.0/9 each but thanks to his better tiebreak Nesterov won the tournament.

The field in the GM Mix B tournament included some well-known names, for example Baadur Jobava, former World Championship candidate Johan Hjartarson from Iceland, or IM Vaishali R, the sister of Praggnanandhaa. The youngest player in the field was the U12 player Khumoyun Begmuratov from Uzbekistan.

Elo-favourite Jobava lost to Vaishali in round two, and in the end finished with 5.5/9, half a point behind the young Indian IM Amit Doshi Moksh (born 2003), Dutch GM Lucas Van Foreest (born 2001), and IM Arthur Davtyan from Armenia (born 2002). As Moksh had the best tiebreak, he won the tournament.

Lucas Van Foreest drew his crucial game against Jobava but twice missed a win in a better position.
 

Black played 44...Rc7? missing the win after 44...Qf4! 45.Qxf4 (45.Rb7+ Kh6–+; 45.Dg1 Rxd1 46.Qxd1 Qh2#) 45...Rxd1+–+. After 45.Rf3 Rc1 46.Rb3 Black again missed his chance and played 46...Qe7? though 46...Qf4! was still winning.

After 95 moves the game ended in a draw.

GM Luca Moroni was the Elo-favourite in the IM Mix tournament but it was the untitled German player Simon Knudsen (born 1999) who finished sole first with 7.0/9.

GM-Mix A

Final standings

GM-Mix B

Final standings

IM-Mix

Final standings

Translation from German: Johannes Fischer

Links

• Tournament page
• Chess-results