Nutcracker tournament in Moscow: Tomashevsky and Esipenko best players

by Max Berchtenbreiter
3/12/2020 – In the last round of the classical nutcracker chess tournament in Moscow, Semyon Lomasov defeated Evgeniy Najer and equalized for the young masters. The subsequent rapid round was decisive between the veterans and the young ones. The "kings" held the upper hand against the "princes" with 35-29.

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The "kings" on top

The "Nutcracker" tournament 2020 took place in the Moscow Central Chess Club, divided into one part of standard chess (rated twice) and one in rapid chess. Four "kings of chess" met four "princes", the young players. Alexei Shirov, Boris Gelfand, Evgeny Tomashevsky and Evgeny Najer vs. Andrey Esipenko, Semyon Lomasov, Alexey Sarana and Daniil Yuffa.

After the kings were in the lead in the first half of standard chess (9:7), the young stars were able to fight back in the second half. The victim of the veterans was Najer, who lost two of his games. In the third round, Andrey Esipenko (3 out of 4 in the standard round with a performance of 2822) defeated him in a currently relevant variation of the English opening.

 

Evgeny Tomashevsky stood out among the veterans, who also scored 3 out of 4

With an equal score of 16:16, the games continued to the last part of the tournament, being rapid chess. After a balanced first round, the veterans ultimately had the upper hand. Boris Gelfand made sure of this with 6½/8 in rapid chess. The Israeli World Championship finalist from 2012 highlighted the performance explosion of "Prince" Andrey Esipenko. His gameplay had continuously developed since his first participation in the nutcracker tournament, and he is almost playing like a "2700" now.

 

More about the tournament...

Tournament site...

Translation from German: Arne Kaehler


Max Berchtenbreiter, born 1994, has been playing chess for almost 20 years, and since the season 2017/2018 the International Master he has been playing in Germany's second league for the Münchener Schachclub 1836. Currently, Max writes his PhD about Modern History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.

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