Nigel Short wins Thai Open

4/20/2015 – Nigel Short added another tournament win to his long list of successes. With focused play he won the last round of the Thai Open in Bangkok against Indian IM Diptayan Ghosh with Black to finish with 7.5/9 and win the tournament on tie-break. Second place went to Indian GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly, third place to Kamil Dragun from Poland. Both also scored 7.5/9.

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Tournament winner Nigel Short (Photo: Nigel Short's Facebook page)

Nigel Short, born 1. June 1965, currently number 64 in world, played his first British Championship at the age of twelve, and in 1979 he broke Bobby Fischer's record to become the youngest International Master at that time. Short's enormous experience showed in the last round of the Thai Open. After eight rounds number one seed GM Wang Hao from China was leading the field with 7.0/8, followed by five players with 6.5/7 each. Short was one of those and in round nine had to play with Black against Indian IM Diptayan Ghosh. Short reached a complex middlegame in a Nimzo-Indian but instead of seeking complications at any costs to play for a win he kept things under control throughout the game, put continuous pressure on his oppenent to finally convert a positional advantage into a better endgame which he won with precise play.

Wang Hao fared less well. The Chinese Grandmaster had to play with Black against Indian GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly who openend the game with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.Qe2 seeming to indicate that he would be happy with a draw. But apparently this threw Wang Hao off balance and he did not seem to be able to decide whether he wanted to play for a win with Black or whether he should settle for a draw. As a consequence he gradually started to drift from a completely equal to a worse position which he lost.

Ganguly and Wang Hao enjoying the pleasures of Thailand (Picture taken from the official tournament site)

Polish GM Kamil Dragun followed a completely different strategy. He had the white pieces against the nominally stronger Francisco Vallejo Pons and attacked right from the start. An approach that paid off.

Final standings

Rk.	SNo		Name	FED	RtgI	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3
1	3	GM	Short Nigel D	ENG	2678	7.5	0.0	52.0	42.25
2	6	GM	Ganguly Surya Shekhar	IND	2619	7.5	0.0	51.0	42.25
3	7	GM	Dragun Kamil	POL	2576	7.5	0.0	47.0	39.00
4	1	GM	Wang Hao	CHN	2713	7.0	0.0	55.0	41.00
5	2	GM	Vallejo Pons Francisco	ESP	2696	6.5	0.0	55.5	38.00
6	8	GM	Horvath Jozsef	HUN	2522	6.5	0.0	55.0	37.50
7	15	GM	Kunte Abhijit	IND	2477	6.5	0.0	52.5	36.50
8	13	GM	Barbosa Oliver	PHI	2489	6.5	0.0	52.0	35.75
9	10	IM	Ghosh Diptayan	IND	2512	6.5	0.0	51.0	35.50
10	4	GM	Gustafsson Jan	GER	2639	6.5	0.0	51.0	34.25
11	16	GM	Deepan Chakkravarthy J.	IND	2475	6.5	0.0	50.5	33.50
12	17	IM	Sunilduth Lyna Narayanan	IND	2464	6.5	0.0	50.0	35.50
13	9	GM	Gomez John Paul	PHI	2520	6.5	0.0	48.5	34.00
14	25	IM	Himanshu Sharma	IND	2416	6.5	0.0	47.5	33.00
15	14	IM	Illingworth Max	AUS	2489	6.5	0.0	47.5	32.75
16	21	IM	Swapnil S. Dhopade	IND	2446	6.5	0.0	47.5	32.75
17	11	GM	Rasmussen Allan Stig	DEN	2507	6.5	0.0	47.5	31.50
18	22	IM	Karthikeyan P.	IND	2443	6.5	0.0	44.5	30.25
19	51	FM	Lorparizangeneh Shahin	IRI	2319	6.0	0.0	52.5	33.25
20	18	GM	Torre Eugenio	PHI	2460	6.0	0.0	51.5	33.00
21	19	GM	Schebler Gerhard	GER	2451	6.0	0.0	51.5	32.00
22	34	IM	Bersamina Paulo	PHI	2390	6.0	0.0	50.0	30.50
23	27	IM	Smirnov Anton	AUS	2410	6.0	0.0	48.5	30.25
24	5	GM	Socko Bartosz	POL	2628	6.0	0.0	48.5	30.00
25	20	IM	Sammalvuo Tapani	FIN	2450	6.0	0.0	47.5	29.50
26	58		Dai Changren	CHN	2275	6.0	0.0	47.0	28.00
27	29		Ravi Teja S.	IND	2405	6.0	0.0	46.5	29.50
28	31		Krishna C.r.g.	IND	2402	6.0	0.0	46.0	29.00
29	23	IM	Beikert Guenther Dr.	GER	2428	6.0	0.0	44.0	27.00
30	35	GM	Gonzales Jayson	PHI	2385	6.0	0.0	41.5	27.50
31	82		Ritviz Parab	IND	2188	5.5	0.0	50.5	29.00
32	64		Hemant Sharma	IND	2248	5.5	0.0	49.0	26.50
33	114		Liu Zhaoqi	CHN	2053	5.5	0.0	47.5	28.00
34	30	IM	Ikeda Junta	AUS	2403	5.5	0.0	47.5	26.00
35	85	WIM	Frayna Janelle Mae	PHI	2167	5.5	0.0	47.0	26.75
36	33	FM	Juhasz Kristof	HUN	2393	5.5	0.0	46.0	28.00
37	47	FM	Biag Ivan Gil	PHI	2328	5.5	0.0	46.0	26.75
38	52	FM	Terekhov Andrey	RUS	2318	5.5	0.0	45.0	26.75
39	88		Grafil Franz Robert	PHI	2156	5.5	0.0	45.0	24.25
40	39		Severino Sander	PHI	2355	5.5	0.0	44.5	25.50

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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.