Shankland wins Prague Masters after dramatic final round

Prague Chess Festival - Masters

Radoslaw Wojtaszek’s blunder in the game against Jan-Krzysztof Duda was rather crude, at least for players of that level. It occurred shortly before the time control, right after Duda had radically changed the character of the game with a double-edged piece sacrifice. After his mishap, Wojtaszek was simply lost.

Shankland had already won the direct encounter against Duda in the second round and, since this was the first tiebreak criterion, a draw against Jorden van Foreest would have been enough for him to win the tournament. But the Dutchman was playing to win.

The mistake that finally derailed Van Foreest’s ambitious plans was at least as dramatic as Wojtaszek’s against Duda. And Shankland knew exactly how to win the game. He did not let the chance be taken away from him, so that in the end he had a half-point lead over Duda in the final standings table.

Results - Round 7

Final standings

All games - Masters

Open

In the Open, Polish GM Marcin Krzyzanowski and Austrian IM Felix Blohberger shared first place on 7 points. If we have interpreted the somewhat cryptic regulations correctly, however, the Polish player is the tournament winner based on the fourth (!) tiebreak criterion — more games played with black: 5 compared to Blohberger’s 4.

These two players were the only ones — out of the eight co-leaders after the penultimate round — that won their last games of the event.

Facing the World Champions

During his career, Vlastimil Hort, who himself belongs to the same generation as Bobby Fischer, met no less than eight world champions over the board. In the early 60s he crossed swords with Mihail Tal, and at the end of the eighties he was sitting over the board from Garry Kasparov. Between the two there were meetings with chess legends Botvinnik, Petrosian, Smyslov, Spassky, Fischer and Karpov.

...99 players

All games - Open

Links

• Official site
• All info at Chess-Results: Masters | Open