Ivanchuk wins Capablanca Memorial with 2839 performance

XLV Edición del Torneo Capablanca in Memoriam 2010

The Capablanca Memorial, a tournament commemorating José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera (1888–1942), who was World Champion from 1921 to 1927, took place in Havana, Cuba, from June 9th to 22nd, 2010. There were three groups: the Elite, Premier and Open. The Elite Group, a category 18 event with an average rating of 2700, is a double-round robin with Vassily Ivanchuk, who won the event three times in a row from 2005 to 2007, followed by Evgeny Alekseev, 19-year-old Ian Nepomniachtchi, the reigning European champion, World Championship finalist Nigel Short, and top Cuban players, Leinier Dominguez, who won it in 2008 and 2009) and Lazaro Bruzon.

Ukrainian GM Vassily Ivanchuk started this double-round robin tournament with a black-piece victory over Nigel Short. He continued with three more wins and no losses, leading from start to finish, to win the Elite group for the fourth time (see table below). Ivanchuk is the first player to do so in the 48-year history of this auspicious event. [A number of eagle-eyed readers have pointed out that Tony Miles also had four victories – but one of them, in 1994, was shared.]

Local boy and currently second strongest GM in the Americas (recently overtaken
by Hikaru Nakamura) scored nine draws and one win to share 3-4th place with...

... former World Championship challenger Nigel Short, who won three, lost two and drew five.

All four top ranked players performed above their FIDE ratings: Ivanchuk at 2839, Nepo at 2771, Dominguez at 2732 and Short at 2738.

Final standings

Interestingly there were more black wins than white in this tournament:

Statistics Of the 30 games played so far in this event: 63% (19 games) ended in draws White won 5 games = 17% Black won 6 games = 20%

FIDE President Ilyumzhinov in Havana

The election for FIDE President is being fought out in Latin America as well. Both the incumbent Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and his rival Anatoly Karpov visited Cuba, the former bearing a special gift.

FIDE President Ilyumzhinov greets Leinier Dominguez – on the right Anatoly Karpov

Speaking at the closing ceremony Ilyumzhinov announced a US $500,000 five-year prize fund from his personal funds for two new tournaments in the FIDE Calendar. The competitions will be named Caribbean Cup and Latin America Cup. The first tournament is aimed primarily as support of the chess talents and countries of the Caribbean region which belong to the CACDEC list.

The Capablanca Memorial

This tournament has been held annually in Cuba for almost half a century. The first José Raúl Capablanca Memorial was held 20 April to 20 May 1962 in the Habana Libre hotel in Havana, Cuba. Miguel Najdorf was first in a field of 22 players. Here are the final standings:

The fourth edition of the tournament in 1965 was unusual. US Champion Bobby Fischer was invited and offered a $3,000 appearance fee, but the U.S. State Department would not allow him to travel to Cuba due to hostile Cuba-US relations. So Fischer played his games by telex from the Marshall Chess Club in New York City. Former World Champion Vasily Smyslov (USSR) won the tournament with 15½/21, Borislav Ivkov (Yugoslavia), Efim Geller (USSR), and Fischer shared second through fourth, a half point behind.

Here for the record are the winners of all 45 editions of the Capablanca Memorial

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: Elite – Premiere – Open The games were 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!