Amin Tabatabaei dominates Rejkjavík Open, gets 2849 TPR

by Stefan Liebig
4/2/2026 – Amin Tabatabaei won the Reykjavík Open in dominant fashion. After securing seven consecutive victories at the start, he clinched the winner's trophy with two draws in the final rounds. In second place finished US grandmaster Zhou Jianchao, half a point behind. Third place went to the Ukrainian legend Vasyl Ivanchuk, who had the best tiebreak score among a group of seven players on 7 points. | Photo: Jökull Úlfarsson
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Tabatabaei now world number 28

Starting a strong open tournament with seven wins in as many games is far from common. For Amin Tabatabaei, this meant not only a clear first place at the Reykjavík Open 2026, but also a rating performance of around 3200.

Naturally, in the final two rounds his primary focus was on securing overall victory. With two draws against England's Matthew J Wadsworth and Denmark's Mads Andersen, he achieved outright victory comfortably. Despite these draws against lower-rated opponents, the tournament winner's final performance rating of 2849 is highly noteworthy. It earned the Iranian star 14 Elo points, allowing him to climb into the top 30 of the live world rankings.

In the end, only US grandmaster Zhou Jianchao managed to remain within striking distance. However, as he had already dropped points in rounds 4, 5 and 7, drawing with Marc'Andria Maurizzi (FRA), Filip Magold (ROU) and David Brodsky (USA), the top two finishers were not paired against each other.

The decisive moment for the tournament victory was above all Tabatabaei's win in round five against living legend Vasyl Ivanchuk. The Ukrainian nevertheless secured third place in the final standings with 7 points, one point behind the winner.

Vasyl Ivanchuk

Vasyl Ivanchuk | Photo: Jökull Úlfarsson

For Tabatabaei, this triumph comes shortly after his victory at the Tegernsee Open at the end of 2025, where he scored 8 points from 9 rounds. As a result, he reached his current official rating of 2700, which made him the favourite in Reykjavík - a status the FC Bayern Munich player more than justified.

Here is his final victory of the event, against sixth seed Marc'Andria Maurizzi.

Final standings

Rk. Name Pts. TB1
1 M. Amin Tabatabaei 8 9
2 Jianchao Zhou 7,5 9
3 Vasyl Ivanchuk 7 9
4 Mads Andersen 7 9
5 Vahap Sanal 7 9
6 Matthieu Cornette 7 9
7 Tong(Qd) Xiao 7 9
8 Abhijeet Gupta 7 9
9 Irakli Akhvlediani 7 9
10 Bogdan-Daniel Deac 6,5 9
11 Filip Magold 6,5 9
12 Maxime Lagarde 6,5 9
13 Timothe Razafindratsima 6,5 9
14 Christophe Sochacki 6,5 9
15 Matthew J Wadsworth 6,5 9
16 Bryce Tiglon 6,5 9
17 Nino Batsiashvili 6,5 9
18 Noe Tutisani 6,5 9
19 Praveen Balakrishnan 6,5 9
20 Emre Can 6,5 9
21 Simon K Williams 6,5 9
22 S Ajay Krishna 6,5 9
23 Vignir Vatnar Stefansson 6,5 9
24 Ethan Guo 6,5 9
25 Liya Kurmangaliyeva 6,5 9
26 Sebastien Maze 6,5 9
27 Jain Krishay 6,5 9
28 Marcandria Maurizzi 6 9
29 Mahadevan Siva 6 9
30 Mai Narva 6 9

...422 players

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Topics: Amin Tabatabaei, Reykjavík Open 2026, Vassily Ivanchuk
Stefan Liebig, born in 1974, is a journalist and co-owner of a marketing agency. He now lives in Barterode near Göttingen. At the age of five, strange pieces on his neighbour’s shelf aroused his curiosity. Since then, the game of chess has cast a spell over him. Flying high in the NRW youth league with his home club SV Bad Laasphe and several appearances in the second division team of Tempo Göttingen were highlights for the former youth South Westphalia champion.
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