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Nikita Vitiugov wins the traditional Gibraltar Chess Festival |
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Friday, 01 February 2013 23:06 |
Nikita Vitiugov won the traditional Gibraltar Chess Festival that took place on 21-31 January, 2013, after defeating Nigel Short in a dramatic tiebreak in the last round.
Seven players from the 2700 club were the headliners in this year’s event, but only three players got to the final round in the shared first place with 7.5/9 points. Nikita Vitiugov was paired against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. They played a very tactical line, where probably most of the moves where part of their preparation; the game ended in a 36 moves draw when the Russian started to give perpetual check to the Black king.
In the second board, the other leader Nigel Short, played against the Czech star David Navara. They played a quite interesting game that, however, was never far from equality. They signed the peace treaty at move 39. So, until this point, we already knew that there would be a tie-break, because nobody was able to make more than 8 points, and three players already had gotten this score.
The third player to get to 8 points was the Indian Chanda Sandipan, who took advantage of Le Quang Liem‘s suspicious handling of the opening. The Indian already had a big advantage by move 20 due to the weak position of the White king in the center. The Vietnamese surrendered at move 37 when his opponent threatened to give mate or take his queen.
The English GM Michael Adams tried to squeeze a victory in his game against Kiril Georgiev in order to get to the tie-break, but the Bulgarian defended correctly. The draw was achieved by move 68.
Replay the games with computer analysis
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