Riga Tech University Open: Armenians on top

German talents ditch national championship 

An impressive phalanx of young, strong grandmasters faced off at the RTU-Open in Latvia, among them the cream of the German crop: Bluebaum, Donchenko, Svane, Schroeder, Kollars — a series of (roughly) 2600s, which testifies that at the top of the German chess the "young savages" are gaining ground. In Riga they could expect both stronger opposition and a threefold higher prize fund (€15,000 euros) than in the German Championship.

Of this group, Svane performed the best with five wins and four draws to reach a tie for 3rd-9th places. The biggest piece of the prize cake was sliced off by two Armenians: Robert Hovhannisyan and Manuel Petrosyan landed in shared first with 7½ / 9, followed by local hero Igor Kovalenko and upcoming Russian star Andrey Esipenko among two of the seven players with 7/9.

The RTU-Open

The 16-year-old Esipenko is going to be one to watch in the coming years. He has been steadily moving up the ranks of the Top Juniors list — currently at number 18.

In the seventh round, he dismantled IM Cruz Lledo's dubious novelty 9...f5 in the Queen's Gambit Accepted.

Also in the seventh round, Hovhannisyan took down his main rival GM Igor Kovalenko with a killer blow: 

How to play the Queen's Gambit

Garry Kasparov took to the Queen’s Gambit at a relatively late stage of his chess career, but then had the best training anyone could imagine: in his first match for the world championship against Anatoly Karpov, this opening appeared on the board no less than 19 times. Now he shares his knowledge with you.

40.Re7! Nf5  (40...Qxe7 41.Ng6+) 41.Nxf5 Qg6 42.Rxh7+ 1-0

Petrosyan won his last three games to pull into a tie for first place including a fine effort in the last round against local Latvian GM Nikita Meshkovs.

White has been dutifully "playing for two results" and has managed to get his opponent into a position where he has no constructive moves. But 34...h6 proved to be quite destructive after the nice manoeuvre, 35.Nc3 Re5 36.Rxe5 Qxe5 37.Rd5! Qf6 38.Rf5, targeting the f7 pawn. Black is helpless.

For the German delegation, the tournament went pretty well. After two thirds she was closed on the upper ranks to find — with one exception: Matthias Bluebaum started poorly (2/4) and even had to look up to his father Karl-Ernst (Elo 2253) playing on a higher board. 

Attacking the Semi-Slav with g3

The Semi-Slav with 5.g3 offers White a simple but dangerous weapon to fight one of Black's most popular options against 1.d4. Rather than emphasizing on the loads of theory, the 60 min DVD thoroughly explains typical plans for White to develop his pieces effectively while keeping an eye on tactical traps.

Karl-Ernst Bluebaum (back right) was ahead of his 400-Elo stronger son Matthias

Alexander Donchenko missed with 5/6 in a superior position the jump to 6/7. He lost first the thread, then the game (see below) and ended finally with 6/9 in the "pocket money" prize group.

Dimitrij Kollars should be even less satisfied, as he scored 5/8 but lost the last round without a fight. He was in good company, however, with the prodigious new GM Praggnanandhaa among those in the 5/9 score group after he "castled" to finish the tournament — an indication of just how strong the RTU Open has become.

Kreisl, from Austria, scored his second GM-norm after pragmatically taking a short draw with white in the ninth round to finish with a performance of 2629.

Final standings (top 20)

1.e4 - How to tame the Alekhine, Scandinavian and Pirc

On this DVD, Victor Bologan shows how to successfully combat the Pirc, Alekhine and Scandinavian Defences with a complete opening repertoire. As ever, Bologan recommends the main lines.

All games and commentary

Daily live commentary was provided by European ChessTV

Translation from German and additional reporting: Macauley Peterson

Links

• Official site
• Full results (Chess-Results)
• Perlen vom Bodensee "Pearls from Lake Constance"