Lupulescu Wins Reykjavik Open Among 8-Way Tie
Romanian GM Constantin Lupulescu won the Reykjavik Open with the best tiebreak in a group of eight players finishing on 7/9. The 15-year-old Iranian GM Alireza Firouzja was second. Firouzja had won the European Fischer Random Championship on the rest day.
We're picking up the tournament after five rounds, when the rising star Firouzja was sharing the lead with Armenian GMs Robert Hovhannisyan and Sergei Movsesian and the eventual winner Lupulescu.
You can read our first report on the Reykjavik Open here.
While Hovhannisyan and Firouzja drew on board one without much fireworks, Lupulescu grabbed his chance and took the sole lead with the following excellent victory over Movsesian. Black never really had any counterplay.
English grandmaster Gawain Jones was moving up in the standings as well thanks to a black victory over French GM Maxime Lagarde. It looks like Jones has now fixed his Møller Ruy Lopez repertoire, after his crushing loss against Fabiano Caruana at the 2017 Chess.com Isle of Man tournament.
With a similar tactical theme used by Caruana (putting a piece en prise on g5) White this time failed to impress:
In round seven Lupulescu increased his lead to a full point with another win with the black pieces. This time he defeated Firouzja, who apparently isn't reading all the Chess.com news reports just yet!
On March 30, in our report on Vladislav Artemiev's victory at the European Championship, Romain Edouard's win in the French against Miguel Santos was covered, and Firouzja went down in the same line. (Or did he read it and was he planning on our suggestion 17.f5?)
No fewer than 10 players were trailing the leader by half a point: Hovhannisyan (Armenia), Nils Grandelius (Sweden), 2015 winner Erwin l'Ami (Netherlands), Tigran Petrosian (Armenia), Gawain Jones (England), Sabino Brunello (Italy), Mircea-Emilian Parligras (Romania), 2016 winner Abhijeet Gupta (India) and IMs Kassa Korley (Denmark) and Quentin Loiseau (France).
The latter had beaten Dutch GM Jorden van Foreest, who must have missed a nasty pin on his rook twice in a row:
The tournament was suddenly wide open again when Lupulescu lost his white game in the penultimate round to Jones. Playing h3 and later h3-h4-h5 against the Gruenfeld was certainly creative, but Jones reacted strongly:
Just one other player on 5.5 points won and joined the leaders Lupulescu and Jones. This was another Romanian GM, Parligras, who beat the French IM after surviving a lost position:
The following game from round eight was just splendid. It would take too much time to analyze everything that happened, but make sure you go through the moves.
Can't remember the last time I had more fun watching a game than @GMGrandelius vs Gupta in the #ReykjavikOpen today. Immense tension building effort as black, followed by inspired sacrificial attack, all of it inhumanly difficult. Great brawl.
— Jonathan Tisdall (@GMjtis) April 15, 2019
Paired against each other in the final round, compatriots Lupulescu and Parligras expectedly drew their game on board one. With a win Jones would have become the sole tournament winner, but that scenario was never very realistic.
Parligras vs Lupulescu on board 1 looking like it might be peaceful....clearing the path for @GMGawain to capture the outright win! #ReykjavikOpen pic.twitter.com/7rtT4f8Pfm
— ReykjavikOpenChess (@ReykjavikOpen) April 16, 2019
In fact, he was on the verge of defeat against l'Ami but by holding this endgame, Jones made sure he will be a 2700 player in the May 2019 FIDE rating list.
With this draw Jones joined the group on seven points, while l'Ami remained half a point behind. That group of seven points was as big as eight players, with Firouzja coming in second place on tiebreak and Lupulescu in first.
Congratulations to Constantin Lupulescu who wins on tiebreak in a massive tie for first at the GAMMA Reykjavik Open. #ReykjavikOpen pic.twitter.com/dowd0dLHhg
— ReykjavikOpenChess (@ReykjavikOpen) April 16, 2019
Firouzja faced stiff resistance from the 56-year-old GM Johann Hjartarson, and it begs the question if the 15-year-old Iranian knew he was playing a former top grandmaster!
Only deep in the endgame the Icelandic player stumbled after having defended nicely for so long. Firouzja's live rating, in case you're wondering, is now 2682.6.
On the rest day, Firouzja had won the second European Fischer Random Championship. This way, he became the first qualifier for a very strong Fischer Random knockout tournament organized in Norway in October, about which Chess.com will be publishing information very soon.
2019 Reykjavik Open | Final Standings (Top 20)
| Rk. | SNo | Fed | Title | Name | RtgI | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 | TB4 | rtg+/- |
| 1 | 6 | GM | Lupulescu Constantin | 2634 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 44,5 | 6 | 15,4 | |
| 2 | 3 | GM | Firouzja Alireza | 2669 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 43,5 | 6 | 7,5 | |
| 3 | 2 | GM | Grandelius Nils | 2687 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 41,5 | 6 | 1,4 | |
| 4 | 1 | GM | Jones Gawain C B | 2698 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 41,5 | 5 | 3,8 | |
| 5 | 7 | GM | Parligras Mircea-Emilian | 2633 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 41,0 | 6 | 5,3 | |
| 6 | 11 | GM | Petrosian Tigran L. | 2605 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 41,0 | 5 | 7,2 | |
| 7 | 9 | GM | Tari Aryan | 2615 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 40,5 | 6 | 3,1 | |
| 8 | 12 | GM | Gupta Abhijeet | 2602 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 38,5 | 6 | 2,6 | |
| 9 | 8 | GM | Hovhannisyan Robert | 2630 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 9 | 44,0 | 4 | 10,4 | |
| 10 | 5 | GM | Movsesian Sergei | 2637 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 9 | 43,5 | 5 | 4,2 | |
| 11 | 4 | GM | l'Ami Erwin | 2647 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 9 | 43,5 | 4 | 5,0 | |
| 12 | 13 | GM | Van Foreest Jorden | 2598 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 9 | 40,5 | 5 | -0,1 | |
| 13-14 | 34 | IM | Kevlishvili Robby | 2451 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 9 | 39,0 | 6 | 8,2 | |
| 13-14 | 36 | IM | Korley Kassa | 2440 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 9 | 39,0 | 6 | 15,4 | |
| 15 | 32 | IM | Loiseau Quentin | 2461 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 9 | 39,0 | 5 | 9,9 | |
| 16 | 27 | GM | Tang Andrew | 2501 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 9 | 33,5 | 6 | -3,3 | |
| 17 | 28 | GM | Salomon Johan | 2495 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 8 | 40,0 | 4 | 13,9 | |
| 18 | 19 | GM | Stefansson Hannes | 2558 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 8 | 37,0 | 6 | 2,5 | |
| 19 | 24 | GM | Sadzikowski Daniel | 2523 | 6,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 42,0 | 5 | 4,7 | |
| 20 | 23 | GM | Brunello Sabino | 2534 | 6,0 | 0,0 | 9 | 41,5 | 4 | 10,1 |
(Full standings here.)
Related post:
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.”
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