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It was a brilliant tournament win for Alexander Donchenko. The German grandmaster went into the final round of the event tied in first place with Igor Kovalenko and Narayanan — Donchenko played black against Kovalenko on top board, and saw Narayanan signing a quick draw against Ilia Smirin on the second board. This meant he had his destiny in his own hands.
In this opening Black opts for active piece play and is not afraid to fight for the initiative from an early stage. One of the many good features of this opening is that Black is often the side which controls the pace of the game.
If Narayanan had defeated Smirin, the Indian would have been ahead of Donchenko no matter what, thanks to his better tiebreak score. That is one of the pitfalls of the Swiss system: if you lose a game early on, you are pretty much hopelessly behind according to the Buchholz system. In the fight for tournament victory (and a first prize of €2,500), Donchenko thus needed to outscore his opponents in order to win the competition.
Another negative aspect of such open tournaments (at least from the point of view of the top seed) is that hardly any Elo points can be gained. The games against rivals with a significantly lower rating, with which the tournament begins, push the average rating of the opponents down quite a bit. According to the organizers’ calculation immediately after the end of the tournament, Donchenko was credited with 4.6 rating points for his performance — which perhaps ‘felt’ to be far too few for such an achievement!
But, as is well known, where there is a will there is a way. The catchy phrase serves well as a headline for Donchenko’s victory over Igor Kovalenko.
FIDE Managing Director Dana Reizniece-Ozola next to Narayanan (2nd), Alexander Donchenko (1st) and Tomas Laurusas (3rd) during the closing ceremony
| Rk. | Name | Rtg | Pts. | TB1 | ||
| 1 |
|
GM | Donchenko Alexander | 2657 | 7,5 | 43,0 |
| 2 |
|
GM | Narayanan.S.L | 2624 | 7,0 | 47,5 |
| 3 |
|
IM | Laurusas Tomas | 2549 | 7,0 | 47,5 |
| 4 |
|
GM | Kantor Gergely | 2533 | 7,0 | 46,0 |
| 5 |
|
GM | Karthikeyan Murali | 2606 | 7,0 | 44,0 |
| 6 |
|
GM | Kovalenko Igor | 2644 | 6,5 | 51,5 |
| 7 |
|
GM | Hakobyan Aram | 2612 | 6,5 | 49,5 |
| 8 |
|
IM | Arjun Kalyan | 2503 | 6,5 | 46,5 |
| 9 |
|
GM | Ivic Velimir | 2571 | 6,5 | 46,5 |
| 10 |
|
GM | Smirin Ilia | 2610 | 6,5 | 46,5 |
| 11 |
|
IM | Pranav Anand | 2417 | 6,5 | 45,0 |
| 12 |
|
GM | Yuffa Daniil | 2556 | 6,5 | 44,0 |
| 13 |
|
GM | Praggnanandhaa R | 2608 | 6,5 | 44,0 |
| 14 |
|
GM | Miezis Normunds | 2468 | 6,5 | 40,0 |
| 15 |
|
FM | Dudin Gleb | 2422 | 6,5 | 39,0 |
| 16 |
|
GM | Sethuraman S.P. | 2644 | 6,5 | 38,0 |
| 17 |
|
GM | Erigaisi Arjun | 2597 | 6,0 | 50,0 |
| 18 |
|
GM | Nihal Sarin | 2655 | 6,0 | 48,5 |
| 19 |
|
IM | Ioannidis Evgenios | 2422 | 6,0 | 47,5 |
| 20 |
|
GM | Budisavljevic Luka | 2495 | 6,0 | 46,5 |
| 21 |
|
GM | Pultinevicius Paulius | 2528 | 6,0 | 46,5 |
| 22 |
|
GM | Sanal Vahap | 2557 | 6,0 | 46,5 |
| 23 |
|
IM | Roshka Yevgeniy | 2476 | 6,0 | 46,0 |
| 24 |
|
GM | Aravindh Chithambaram Vr. | 2641 | 6,0 | 45,5 |
| 25 |
|
GM | Meshkovs Nikita | 2568 | 6,0 | 45,5 |
