The International Chess Festival “Moscow Open 2013″ is taking place from 31st January to 11th February, 2013, at the Russian State Social University (RSSU), B. Pick Street, 4, metro station “Botanical Garden” in Moscow.
Both strong opens, for men and women, saw the favorites making drawn at the first board. In the male tournament, there were 3 draw in the first 4 pairings.
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Live games: Live games Moscow Open 2013 / Live games Students Grandmaster Cup
Participants: Moscow Open 2013 / Moscow Open 2013 women / Young Grandmasters tournament / Young Grandmasters tournament for women
There were a lot of interesting games in the Russia Cup for Men. Ian Nepomniachtchi was very close to suffer a loss with white against FM Nikita Makinian. They played a Scotch opening and, eventually, Nepo started to show some speculative play looking for the initiative, his rival proved that he was up to the task, answering with very energetic moves. Makinian got a pretty big advantage, but ended up exchanging to a rook + bishop vs rook endgame, where Nepomniachtchi defended correctly to save a half point.
The GMs Ildar Khairullin and Evgeny Najer also drew against lower rated opponents in boards 3 and 4, respectively.
In the women’s open, the first seed IM Anastasia Bodnaruk also made a draw; her opponent Natalia Chernyshova achieved this important result when she found a perpetual check idea on move 33. Another surprise in this tournament was given by Aysyla Yakpova, who beat WGM Maria Manakova on the 5th board.
In the Young Grandmasters Tournament, Robert Hovhannisyan lost again, this time against the Russian IM Vladimir Belous. The Armenian’s two pawns disadvantage proved to be too big even in the opposite-colored bishops endgame. After the first 2 rounds, there are two leaders with a perfect score: IM Urii Eliseev and IM Vladimir Belous.
In the round-robin tournament for young women, the Kazakh WGM Dinara Saduakassova is the only player who got two straight victories. In the second round, she won an important game against the strong Polish WGM Karina Szczepkowska-Horowska.
This is crazy.