London Chess Classic 3-12 December 2011
http://www.londonchessclassic.com/classic.standings.htm
http://www.livechess.co.uk/classic/2011 ... index.html
http://www.londonchessclassic.com/pr.wo ... tional.htm
Vladimir Kramnik won the third London Chess Classic by beating the four English players and drawing with the other foreign players to score 16 points (+4=4). Hikaru Nakamura finished second (+4=3-1) after a dramatic last round win against Michael Adams, Magnus Carlsen third with 14 (+3=5) and Luke McShane was fourth (+3=4-1) after losing a crucial game to Kramnik in the penultimate round when he was still fighting for first place. Vishy Anand & Lev Aronian shared 5th= with +1=6-1 whilst Nigel Short, David Howell and Michael Adams finished on 6, 4 and 3 respectively.
Abhijeet Gupta won the open with 8/9 whilst fellow Indian Sahai Grover was second with 7.5/9. Gawain Jones, Aaron Summerscale and Lorin D’Costa shared third along with Tiger Hillarp Persson and Arghyadip Das. Jovanka Houska had a 2573 performance but defeat in her last round game meant she missed her first GM norm by half a point. Lorin D’Costa had a 2601 performance but only played eight games so was one game short of a GM norm. Tom Weber of Luxembourg scored an IM norm but Sahai Grover missed out on a GM norm despite a 2651 performance as he only played 2 GMs.
The women’s event was shared between Dagne Ciuksyte and Guliskhan Nakhbayeva of Kazakhstan with 7.5/9. Guliskhan also secured her first WGM norm by scoring 7.5 in the last eight rounds after a first round loss to Dagne. Susan Lalic scored 4, Meri Grigoryan 2.5 and Ingrid Lauterbach 1.5.
There were two junior matches played in the evenings (double round, 25 minutes per player) with England facing Norway and India. Although the very young and talented team of Ravi Haria, Amy Hoare, Conor Murphy and Rohan Shiatis was defeated by Norway the second match saw a nine board team strengthened by Yang-Fan Zhou, Sam Franklin, Isaac Sanders, Peter Batchelor and William Foo and they proceeded to defeat a much higher rated Indian team that included IM Sahaj Grover, rated 2515, (who scored 7.5/9 in the FIDE open) on board 1. Although the final score was 11.5-6.5 to England, the first round saw England score 7.5/9 including 4/4 on the top four boards.
I would like to say a big thank to Sabrina Chevannes for organising the event and arranging to have the top four boards broadcast live on the internet from the auditorium. Both William Foo and Conor Murphy scored 2/2, Peter Batchelor scored 1.5 and the other six players all scored 1 so every member of the team played their part. The result was a big boost for English junior chess and those who played can be very proud of their performance.
First Saturday, Budapest 3rd – 13th Dec 2011
http://www.chess-results.com/tnr61285.a ... ES&flag=30
http://www.chess-results.com/tnr61287.a ... ES&flag=30
Mark Lyell scored 4/10 in the IM section and Diana Mihajlova 0.5/10 in the FM B section.