Karjakin wins Aeroflot Blitz
Sergey Karjakin won the Aeroflot Blitz tournament in his hometown Moscow, Russia. The Russian grandmaster finished on 15/18 in this double nine round event, half a point more than former blitz world champion Alexander Grischuk.
Moscovite Sergei Karjakin wins the Aeroflot Blitz | All photos in this report © Moscow Chess, more here
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Hotel Cosmos, the venue of the Aeroflot Chess Festival
Traditionally, one day after the Aeroflot Open's last round, the chess festival finishes with a blitz tournament. And a very strong blitz tournament, we may add! This time there were no less than 117 grandmasters, among them Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Morozevich, Peter Svidler, Alexander Grischuk, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Baadur Jobava, Dmitry Jakovenko, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Le Quang Liem, Krishnan Sasikiran and Vallejo Pons.
A terribly strong blitz tournament attracts spectators like a magnet
Top seed Karjakin went off to a great start, scoring 2-0 against Bayarsaikhan Gundavaa, Alojzije Jankovic, Vasily Papin and Dmitry Andreikin. Then Dmitry Jakovenko held him to 1-1, but Maxim Dlugy, the retired American GM who lives in Moscow, also lost 2-0. Karjakin then also defeated Baadur Jobava (1.5.-0.5), the match which Karjakin considered to be the most difficult. The crucial match with Alexander Grischuk in the penultimate round ended in 1-1. In the final round, a 1.5-0.5 victory over Alexei Dreev was enough for Karjakin to finish just half a point ahead of Grischuk, reaching 15 points in total.
Unfortunately the games weren't saved digitally, so you really had to be there to enjoy the spectacle. One of the many spectators at the tournament was 12th World Champion Anatoly Karpov. As a member of the State Duma he is more busy than ever, but he still enjoys watching chess wherever he can.
Arbiter (of the main tournament) Geurt Gijssen, Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Bakh, Anatoly Karpov
giving a speech, and behind him the arbiter of the blitz tournament Andrzej Filipowicz
With these 18 games of blitz, Karjakin won € 7,000 euro - not a bad day at the office! Grischuk took home € 4,000. The total prize fund was € 25,000, as always sponsored by Aeroflot Airlines.
As we understand, this tournament will be calculated for the FIDE blitz ratings - the first list will appear July 1st, 2012. At the moment, Karjakin must be number one in the "live ratings"!
Aeroflot Blitz 2012 | Round 9 (final) standings (top 50)
| Place | Title | Name | Fed. | FIDE | Total | MBch. | Bch. | Wins | |
| 1 | GM | Karjakin, Sergey | RUS | 2769 | 15.0 | 81.50 | 104.50 | 7 | |
| 2 | GM | Grischuk, Alexander | RUS | 2761 | 14.5 | 75.00 | 93.00 | 7 | |
| 3 | GM | Yu, Yangyi | CHN | 2631 | 13.5 | 72.50 | 91.50 | 6 | |
| 4 | GM | Popov, Ivan | RUS | 2599 | 13.5 | 68.50 | 87.00 | 6 | |
| 5 | GM | Shimanov, Aleksandr | RUS | 2549 | 13.0 | 81.00 | 100.00 | 6 | |
| 6 | GM | Jumabayev, Rinat | KAZ | 2573 | 13.0 | 69.50 | 87.00 | 6 | |
| 7 | GM | Dreev, Aleksey | RUS | 2698 | 12.5 | 81.50 | 105.50 | 6 | |
| 8 | GM | Andreikin, Dmitry | RUS | 2688 | 12.5 | 80.50 | 104.50 | 5 | |
| 9 | GM | Tomashevsky, Evgeny | RUS | 2740 | 12.5 | 73.50 | 94.50 | 5 | |
| 10 | GM | Caruana, Fabiano | ITA | 2736 | 12.5 | 72.50 | 93.00 | 4 | |
| 11 | GM | Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar | AZE | 2747 | 12.0 | 81.50 | 104.50 | 4 | |
| 12 | GM | Jobava, Baadur | GEO | 2704 | 12.0 | 80.00 | 102.50 | 6 | |
| 13 | GM | Bosiocic, Marin | CRO | 2580 | 12.0 | 78.50 | 99.50 | 4 | |
| 13 | GM | Dlugy, Maxim | USA | 2518 | 12.0 | 78.50 | 99.50 | 4 | |
| 15 | GM | Zhigalko, Sergei | BLR | 2658 | 12.0 | 73.50 | 92.50 | 6 | |
| 16 | GM | Gupta, Abhijeet | IND | 2652 | 12.0 | 73.00 | 93.50 | 5 | |
| 17 | GM | Sjugirov, Sanan | RUS | 2622 | 12.0 | 72.00 | 92.00 | 6 | |
| 18 | GM | Gopal G.N. | IND | 2566 | 12.0 | 71.50 | 93.00 | 5 | |
| 19 | GM | Korobov, Anton | UKR | 2660 | 12.0 | 71.50 | 91.00 | 3 | |
| 20 | GM | Mamedov, Rauf | AZE | 2636 | 12.0 | 69.00 | 88.50 | 4 | |
| 21 | GM | Bukavshin, Ivan | RUS | 2517 | 12.0 | 68.00 | 87.00 | 5 | |
| 22 | GM | Wen, Yang | CHN | 2543 | 12.0 | 67.50 | 86.00 | 5 | |
| 23 | GM | Papin, Vasily | RUS | 2570 | 12.0 | 64.50 | 84.00 | 6 | |
| 24 | GM | Jakovenko, Dmitry | RUS | 2729 | 11.5 | 77.00 | 100.00 | 4 | |
| 25 | GM | Lu, Shanglei | CHN | 2516 | 11.5 | 74.00 | 95.00 | 4 | |
| 26 | GM | Ipatov, Alexander | TUR | 2586 | 11.5 | 71.00 | 91.00 | 3 | |
| 27 | GM | Svidler, Peter | RUS | 2749 | 11.5 | 70.50 | 91.00 | 3 | |
| 28 | GM | Nepomniachtchi, Ian | RUS | 2735 | 11.5 | 68.50 | 90.50 | 5 | |
| 29 | GM | Rodshtein, Maxim | ISR | 2634 | 11.5 | 60.50 | 77.00 | 3 | |
| 30 | GM | Grigoriants, Sergey | RUS | 2570 | 11.0 | 74.00 | 94.50 | 4 | |
| 31 | GM | Eljanov, Pavel | UKR | 2690 | 11.0 | 74.00 | 91.50 | 4 | |
| 32 | GM | Bu, Xiangzhi | CHN | 2670 | 11.0 | 73.50 | 96.00 | 6 | |
| 33 | GM | Robson, Ray | USA | 2596 | 11.0 | 71.50 | 91.50 | 3 | |
| 34 | GM | Alekseev, Evgeny | RUS | 2670 | 11.0 | 71.50 | 90.50 | 5 | |
| 35 | GM | Le, Quang Liem | VIE | 2714 | 11.0 | 69.50 | 88.00 | 3 | |
| 36 | FM | Artemiev, Vladislav | RUS | 2439 | 11.0 | 69.00 | 86.50 | 4 | |
| 37 | GM | Dubov, Daniil | RUS | 2498 | 11.0 | 68.50 | 87.00 | 3 | |
| 38 | Swayams, Mishra | IND | 2386 | 11.0 | 67.00 | 84.50 | 5 | ||
| 39 | GM | Melkumyan, Hrant | ARM | 2620 | 11.0 | 66.00 | 85.00 | 5 | |
| 40 | GM | Gajewski, Grzegorz | POL | 2616 | 11.0 | 65.50 | 85.00 | 4 | |
| 41 | GM | Iturrizaga, Eduardo | VEN | 2649 | 11.0 | 64.50 | 85.00 | 4 | |
| 42 | GM | Morozevich, Alexander | RUS | 2763 | 11.0 | 64.50 | 82.50 | 5 | |
| 43 | GM | Balogh, Csaba | HUN | 2665 | 10.5 | 76.00 | 97.00 | 4 | |
| 44 | IM | Mozharov, Mikhail | RUS | 2478 | 10.5 | 73.50 | 94.50 | 4 | |
| 45 | GM | Kobalia, Mikhail | RUS | 2673 | 10.5 | 72.50 | 93.00 | 3 | |
| 46 | FM | Nakhapetiane, Pogos | RUS | 2511 | 10.5 | 71.50 | 89.00 | 3 | |
| 47 | IM | Grigoryan, Karen H. | ARM | 2482 | 10.5 | 71.00 | 88.00 | 5 | |
| 48 | GM | Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | ROU | 2647 | 10.5 | 69.00 | 91.00 | 4 | |
| 49 | GM | Minasian, Artashes | ARM | 2525 | 10.5 | 69.00 | 89.00 | 4 | |
| 50 | GM | Dobrov, Vladimir | RUS | 2496 | 10.5 | 67.00 | 82.00 | 3 |
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms.
Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools.
Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013.
As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!
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