World Junior Chess Championships 2009 in Patagonia

World Junior Chess Championships 2009 in Patagonia

Puerto Madryn, the host city of the World Junior Championship 2009, is in the province of Chubut in the geographical region known as Patagonia. The town was founded in 1865 by Welsh immigrants and is protected by the Valdés Peninsula.

Patagonia is the southernmost portion of South America, encompassing the terretory of Argentian and Chile, and the southernmost portion of the Andes mountains. The sea around Puerto Madryn is the mating ground of Southern Right Whales and Commerson's Dolphins, which return every year and are naturally a big tourist attraction. You can see the fluke of a Right Whale in the logo of the World Junior Championships.

The championships are being played in two categories: the World Junior Championship U20 and the World Girls Championship U20. Both are 13-round Swiss tournament, with a rate of play of 90 minutes for the first forty moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one.

In case of a tie for first at the end of the tournament this will be broken according to FIDE regulations D.VI.01.14: after eliminating the lowest rated opponent, the sum of opponents' ratings are calculated. The highest total wins. If this does not break the tie the rating of the next lowest rated opponent(s) are elimitated until a decision is possible.

Schedule

After seven rounds Sergei Zhigalko, 20-year-old GM from Belarus was in the sole lead, ahead of the top seed Maxime Vachier-Legrave from France. But the latter won his ninth round black game against German GM Falko Bindrich and joined Zhigalko, who had drawn against GM Eduardo Iturrizaga, in top position. Other hopefuls at the top of the table include England's David Howell (who is being looked after by GM Nigel Short), Israeli GM Maxim Rodshtein, young US American IM Ray Robson, and GM Manuel León Hoyos, who has often been the second of Vassily Ivanchuk in Mexican events.

Top rankings after eight rounds

Top standings after eight rounds (girls)

Links

The official tournament site contains many links to pages which Google blocks because "malicious software is hosted there", including totalspywarescan.com/, pornoscash.com/, spywareshop.info/. Some domain appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including spywareshop.info/, watch2010movies.com/, colonizemoon2010.com/. You will get these warnings if you use Firefox – Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari have far better nerves and simply take you to the suspicious pages. Games are available in PGN, but always with about two days' delay. Here is what we have in PGN:

• All available games from the open section
• All available games from the girls' section