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The Moscow Open is a giant chess festival with quite a long tradition that takes place at the end of January / beginning of February and essentially opens the Moscow tournament season which continues this month with the Aeroflot Open. The venue is the State University of Social Sciences, and this year over 1,500 players were in attendance! The main A-Open is a nine-round Swiss, with a first prize of 500,000 roubles (around EUR €6,700).
The RSSU is located in the north of Moscow in the Ostankinsky District
Arkady Dvorkovich visited the opening ceremony | Photo: open.moscowchess.org
The Moscow Open offers a number of tournaments for different skill levels and age groups. There are also tournaments for disabled chess players and also a problem-solving tournament.
The A-Open attracted about 170 players, with two dozen Grandmasters among them — significant turnout but not outstanding by Russian standards. The top seed was Sanan Sjugirov.
After nine rounds Boris Savchenko was the only player with 7½ points and thus took clear first. The second and third places went to Pavel Ponkratov and Sjugirov as the best of a group of six players with 7 points.
Boris Savchenko
In the last round, Savchenko's opponent, GM Igor Lysyj, passed up any attempt to play for joint first by allowing a forced draw in the opening from the white side of a Gruenfeld.
Black has happily forced a draw after 10...♛xc3+ in more than a dozen GM games. 11.♗d2 ♛b2 12.♗c1 ♛c3+. The game was over in minutes.
But remarkably this was not the first game to finish. That distinction goes to the board two game, where Sjugirov with 6½ points could have ostensibly played for first place with a win. His opponent Artyom Timofeev had a half point less, but opted for a well-trodden drawing path in the Queen's Gambit Accepted when the opportunity presented itself on move 7:
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.
Sjugirov thought for mere seconds before playing 7...♝g4 which allows the forced draw 8.♘g5 ♝xd1 9.♗xf7+ ♚d7 10.♗e6+ which has been seen in hundreds of games.
Savchenko laid the foundation for his win in the penultimate round when he defeated IM Semen Khanin.
An ambitious setup against the Benoni
The topic of this 60 minute video clip is the major idea of the 8.h3 0-0 9.Bd3 line. It has not won much love among defenders of the Benoni - White players are coming dangerously close to realising the dream of squeezing the opponent.
The winners of the A-Open
| Rk. | Name | RtgI | Pts. | TB1 | |
| 1 | GM | Savchenko Boris | 2562 | 7,5 | 43,0 |
| 2 | GM | Ponkratov Pavel | 2630 | 7,0 | 54,5 |
| 3 | GM | Sjugirov Sanan | 2663 | 7,0 | 51,0 |
| 4 | GM | Pridorozhni Aleksei | 2568 | 7,0 | 50,0 |
| 5 | GM | Lysyj Igor | 2633 | 7,0 | 46,5 |
| 6 | GM | Kryakvin Dmitry | 2588 | 7,0 | 45,0 |
| 7 | IM | Ivanov Oleg V | 2429 | 7,0 | 43,0 |
| 8 | IM | Khanin Semen | 2514 | 6,5 | 52,0 |
| 9 | IM | Zakhartsov Vladimir | 2483 | 6,5 | 52,0 |
| 10 | GM | Mozharov Mikhail | 2549 | 6,5 | 50,5 |
| 11 | IM | Tsydypov Zhamsaran | 2545 | 6,5 | 50,0 |
| 12 | FM | Afanasiev Nikita | 2508 | 6,5 | 49,0 |
| 13 | GM | Korneev Oleg | 2545 | 6,5 | 48,5 |
| 14 | GM | Grachev Boris | 2626 | 6,5 | 48,0 |
| 15 | GM | Timofeev Artyom | 2592 | 6,5 | 48,0 |
| 16 | FM | Radzhabov Rodion | 2329 | 6,5 | 47,5 |
| 17 | IM | Golubov Saveliy | 2482 | 6,5 | 43,5 |
| 18 | GM | Hayrapetyan Hovik | 2434 | 6,5 | 43,0 |
| 19 | IM | Tutisani Noe | 2468 | 6,5 | 42,0 |
| 20 | FM | Fakhrutdinov Timur | 2481 | 6,0 | 49,0 |
...170 Players
The women's tournament was also very popular with more than 100 participants. Anastasia Bodnaruk won ahead of Ekaterina Goltseva and 14-year-old Bibisara Assubayeva in joint second.
The winners of the Women's tournament
| Rk. | Name | RtgI | Pts. | TB1 | |
| 1 | IM | Bodnaruk Anastasia | 2413 | 8,0 | 54,5 |
| 2 | WFM | Goltseva Ekaterina | 2141 | 8,0 | 51,5 |
| 3 | FM | Assaubayeva Bibisara | 2372 | 7,0 | 53,0 |
| 4 | IM | Guseva Marina | 2419 | 7,0 | 45,0 |
| 5 | WFM | Gritsayeva Oksana | 2378 | 6,5 | 53,0 |
| 6 | FM | Stetsko Lanita | 2189 | 6,5 | 51,0 |
| 7 | WFM | Getman Tatyana | 2186 | 6,5 | 49,0 |
| 8 | WFM | Afonasieva Anna | 2265 | 6,5 | 45,5 |
| 9 | Borisova Ekaterina | 2244 | 6,0 | 50,5 | |
| 10 | WFM | Smirnova Ekaterina | 2165 | 6,0 | 50,0 |
| 11 | WGM | Maltsevskaya Aleksandra | 2243 | 6,0 | 49,0 |
| 12 | IM | Charochkina Daria | 2344 | 6,0 | 48,0 |
| 13 | WFM | Potapova Margarita | 2274 | 6,0 | 48,0 |
| 14 | Nur-Mukhametova Alisa | 1972 | 6,0 | 47,5 | |
| 15 | WFM | Lysenko Margarita | 2190 | 6,0 | 47,0 |
| 16 | Kirchei Viktoriia | 1972 | 6,0 | 46,5 | |
| 17 | WIM | Badelka Olga | 2387 | 6,0 | 46,0 |
| 18 | WIM | Makarenko Alexandra | 2226 | 6,0 | 44,5 |
| 19 | WFM | Zotova Anastasia | 2054 | 6,0 | 44,0 |
| 20 | WFM | Nurgali Nazerke | 2159 | 6,0 | 41,0 |
...106 Players
Translation from German and additional reporting: Macauley Peterson
