Σκακιστικά νέα

The 51st edition of Mar del Plata Open took place from April 9-16 in the second-largest city in Buenos Aires province. The event gathered 282 participants from eight countries, including 35 titled players.

GM Andres Rodriguez Vila took a decisive victory in the last round to score 8 points and win the tournament.

Four players were knocked out of the American Cup as the first day of Elimination matches took place, with Robson – Shankland and Nemcova – Yan lasting all the way until Armageddon.  In the Champions Bracket, GM Leinier Dominguez dealt a lethal blow to GM Levon Aronian, while FM Alice Lee won a fine technical game to also take the lead against WGM Tatev Abrahamyan.

An action packed day saw five matches decided in the playoffs and one match (Caruana-Xiong) made it all the way to Armageddon, finishing in a dramatic time scramble. After all was said and done, Aronian, Dominguez, Sevian, and Caruana from the Open Field along with Krush, Tokhirjonova, Lee, and Abrahamyan from the Women’s Field advanced to the next stage of the Champions Bracket. Meanwhile the rest of the players were relegated to the Elimination Bracket, where they will get a second chance to win the tournament starting tomorrow.

The world’s first fully in-person chess esports event, the Oslo Esports Cup, got under way on Friday with World Champion Magnus Carlsen in imperious form. Carlsen, who is going for a hat-trick of wins in the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, rounded off the challenge of Polish No.1 Jan-Krzysztof Duda with a thumping 2.5-0.5 victory. The Norwegian even managed to survive a second-game experiment on move 1 as he opened with the highly-dubious 1.f3 – not a standard move at the elite level. That game ended in a draw.

After the Airthings Masters 2022 and the Charity Cup 2022, both won by Magnus Carlsen, the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour breaks new ground next week with the launch of the first fully in-person esports event in chess – the Oslo Esports Cup.

Defending champion Stockfish is the winner of the Top Chess Engine Championship Season 22.

Women’s German Chess Masters 2022 will be held from 22–30 April in Best Western Plus Plaza Hotel Darmstadt. It is a 10-player round-robin tournament with Hanna Marie Klek, Dinara Wagner, Lara Schulze, Melanie Lubbe, Sarah Papp, Josefine Heinemann, Elena Kopke, Jana Schneider, Antonia Ziegenfuss, and Brigitte Burchardt.

Women’s German Chess Masters 2022 participants

Zhaoqin Peng is three times Chinese women’s chess championship, in 1987, 1990 and 1993. Peng has won the Dutch women’s championship an unprecedented fourteen times. She tied for first with Alexandra Kosteniuk at the European Women’s Chess Championship of 2004 in Dresden, and took the silver medal on tiebreak – this brought her the GM title making her the 11th woman to achieve it. This year Zhaoqin Peng will be at the Chess Olympiad 2022 and this will be her 16th appearance!

By IM Kostya Kavutskiy

The inaugural American Cup kicked off today with plenty of decisive action as several players drew first blood in their individual matches within the Champions Bracket. More:  American Chess Cup 2022 preview / Participants / American Cup 2022 live / Official website

The India Rapid and Blitz Chess Championship 2022 are going to take place 27-29 April in Nashik. A total of 123 players are starting in the event. Top seeded is Aravindh Chithambaram, and he is accompanied by GN Gopal, Deepan Chakkravarthy, Ghosh Diptayan, Sriram Jha, Nitin S, etc. Scroll down for the full participants list.

India Rapid and Blitz Chess Championship 2022 participants