Plovdiv European Championship: Revolt of the underrated

The 13th European Individual Championship is taking place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, from March 20th to 31st, 2012. The rate of play is 90 minutes for 40 moves, plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one. The total prize fund is 100,000 Euros, with the top three taking 14,000, 11,000 and 9,000 Euros respectively.

Round two

The game of the round was between the two youngsters Illya Nyzhnyk from Ukraine and Anish Giri from the Netherlands. The former is just fifteen and already a GM rated 2585. Giri is seventeen and has won two national championships (in 2009 and 2011) as well as a super-GM tournament (Reggio Emilia 2011-2012). His rating is 2717, exactly 132 points above Nizhnyk's, so he was the clear favourite in this game, even though he had the black pieces. However, Giri committed an inaccuracy on move 21 and an error on move 22, and was professionally dispatched by his younger colleague. This interesting game was annotated for us by GM Alejandro Ramirez.

Note that on our JavaScript player you can use the cursor keys to play through the main line or click on moves to jump to them on the board. The ChessBase training DVDs shown below the board teach you more about the opening played in the game. The games will be more extensively analysed for the next issue of ChessBase Magazine.

Second seed Shakhryar Mamedyarov (2752, AZE) drew with the black pieces against Luka Paichadze of Georgia, 261 points below him on the rating scale. Similarly Baadur Jobava (2706, GEO), the eighth seed in this event, was unable to score against Bulgarian GM Petar Drenchev, 207 points below him, and David Navara (2700, CZE), playing black, shared the point with IM Dalibor Stojanovic of Bosnia-Herzegovian, 229 rating points below him.

The winner of the European U18 championship in Albena 2011, Nils Grandelius (2545, SWE), beat the more experienced Bartosz Socko (2647, POL), while former European Champion GM Zdenko Kozul (2602, CRO) defeated the winner of the European U14 championship in Albena 2011 Ali Marandi Cemil Can (2315, TUR) in less than 2.5 hours. In an interesting game Vladimir Malakhov (2705, RUS) was defeated by Russian GM Boris Savchenko (2580, RUS). This game has been annotated for us by GM Ramirez:

Other upsets: Russian FM Kirill Alekseenko, rated 2367, won with the black pieces against his compatriot, GM Sergey Volkov, rated 2623, i.e. 256 points below him. And Sarunas Sulskis (2569, LTU) lost against Avital Boruchovsky (2333, ISR). The Bulgarian champion GM Julian Radulski, 2552, defeated Maxim Rodshtein, 2652, with the black pieces. The young Israeli GM is the second of the World Championship challenger Boris Gelfand. Top seed Fabiano Caruana beat GM Tamas Banusz and was one of exactly 40 players with 2.0/2 points.

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Round three

Once again attention was focussed on the game of our round two hero Elijah Nizhnik playing with the black pieces against 26-year-old Ukraine GM Anton Korobova, 2679 and 94 points above the lad. It was a super-sharp game that is certainly worth study (it will be fully analysed in the next issue of ChessBase Magazine).

After his round two loss the other youngster, Dutch GM Anish Giri, was unable to score with the white pieces against IM Dalibor Stojanovic from Bosnia and Herzegovina, ranked almost 250 points below him. Czech GM David Navarre had a bad start as well, losing in round three with white against IM Zoran Arsovich from Serbia, 265 point below him in the Elo rankings. Navara's compatriot Victor Laznicka, rated 2702, lost with the black pieces against 20-year-old Russian GM Alexander Shimanov, who is 111 points below him. Other upsets: French GM Romaine Edward, 2607, lost with black to IM Popilski Gill, 2389, from Israel, and another French GM, Matthew Cornette, 2545, lost to the young Slovak FM Tamas Petenyi, rated 2359.

• Click to view results of all 150 games

Top rankings after round three

• Full rankings of all 348 players

Remaining schedule + Playchess commentary

After every round there will be special wrap-up commentary on Playchess. This starts at 20:00h Server time (= CET, = , 23:00h Moscow, 19:00h London, 3 p.m. New York, 12:00 noon California, 03:00h Beijing, 00:30h New Delhi – you can find the time in your location here). Commentary is in English.

Links Official tournament site All available games in PGN (zipped) Some of the games are being broadcast live on the official web site and some 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 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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