On Thursday, April 16, the last games of the XXIII Anatoly Karpov International Tournament were played at the Ugra Chess Academy.
In the 9th round, the game between Ilia Iljiushenok and Denis Lazavik turned out to be very short: the opponents made a draw by threefold repetition of the position on the 11th move. Thus, the Belarusian grandmaster Denis Lazavik became the winner of the tournament, scoring 6 points out of 9. After the game, he commented on his performance:
“The tournament was quite easy. On the second day, I won two games – it’s quite good for a round-robin event. I’m used to playing in open tournaments, and there you can start with “4 out of 4”, but you still need to win a bunch of games to become the winner, whereas here, after two wins, you can play in a more solid way. Moreover, in the games I played as Black against Raunak Sadhwani and Ilia Iljiushenok, they didn’t really try to beat me, so in fact I was left with White games. Probably the most important was the victory over Ivan Zemlyanskii in the penultimate round: I managed to prepare well there, so I’ll highlight that one. My other wins against Shamsiddin Vokhidov and Benjamin Gledura were more difficult”, said Lazavik.
Draws were also recorded in the games between R. Sadhwani and Lu Shanglei, A. Grebnev and A. Hakobyan, A. Nesterov and B. Gledura, and I. Zemlyanskii and S. Vokhidov.
The Hungarian grandmaster Benjamin Gledura took clear second place with 5.5 points. Aram Hakobyan from Armenia won bronze with 5 points.
Final standings:
- Denis Lazavik — 6 points out of 9
- Benjamin Gledura — 5.5
- Aram Hakobyan — 5
4-7. Raunak Sadhwani, Aleksey Grebnev, Ivan Zemlyanskii, Shamsiddin Vokhidov — 4.5
- Lu Shanglei — 4
- Arseniy Nesterov — 3.5
- Ilia Iljiushenok — 3
Two years in a row, the international tournament named after the legendary world champion has been hosted by the capital of Ugra, and before that it had been held for many years in the town of Poikovsky, Nefteyugansk district. The competition was held in the “rapid classic” format, which was officially approved by FIDE not so long ago, so the grandmasters played two rounds a day for four out of five days.
The tournament was also included in the FIDE Circuit series — the World Championship cycle. The participants received the circuit points according to their performance. The total prize fund of the competition amounted to almost 12 million rubles.
Results:
Chess-results: here
Live broadcast:
Lichess — https://clck.su/ipSXd
Chessopen — https://clck.su/MfYMB
Videotranslation — https://vk.com/chessugra
Photos — https://chesshmao.ru/gallery/