Mamedyarov Starts With Swinging Attack As Aeroflot Open Takes Off
The resurrected Aeroflot Open took off on Friday in Moscow. Top seed GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov got off to a flying start, crushing GM Boris Savchenko in just 19 moves.
Sponsored by Russia's airline Aeroflot, this open tournament has been held 11 times, all between 2002 and 2012. It disappeared in 2013 and did not return in 2014. Now the Aeroflot Open is back, as strong as ever.
The tournament, a nine-round Swiss, takes place March 27 - April 5 in Hotel Cosmos in northeast Moscow. With 1,700 rooms it is one of the biggest hotels in the Russian capital. That follows a tradition: the first few Aeroflot Opens were held in the famous Rossiya Hotel on Red Square, which had 3,200 rooms (but doesn't exist anymore)!
The format is similar to previous years, with rating groups A, B and C. The total prize fund is 140,000 Euro, which includes the prizes for a blitz tournament that will be held on April 5.
The A group's first prize is a massive 18,000 Euros. On top of that, the winner will be invited for the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund, to be held 27 June - 5 July, 2015.
and RCF Executive Director Mark Gluhovsky. | Photo Boris Dolmatovski.
The A group is for players rated 2549 or higher (with some exceptions allowed by the organizers), which means that the top players face strong opponents from the very start. This didn't prevent GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who was also the top seed in Reykjavik two weeks ago, from winning quickly:
Mamedyarov interviewed the night before the first round. | Photo Boris Dolmatovski.
GM Vladimir Potkin had a similar start. From an English Opening he got a tremendous attack that included a Rxf7 sacrifice:
Not all favorites won their first games. For instance, GM Ian Nepomniachtchi and GM Paco Vallejo were held to a draw by IM Stanislav Bogdanovich and GM Sergey Grigoriants respectively.
On a lower board Dutch IM Jorden van Foreest managed to beat GM S.P. Sethuraman:
GM Lu Shanglei, who made headlines last year when he beat GM Magnus Carlsen at the World Blitz Championship in Dubai, defeated the higher rated GM Maxim Matlakov:
GM Richard Rapport won another game in his typical, inimitable style. Can we still compare it to the chess played at coffee houses? Is chess still being played at coffee houses in the 21st century? Sure, but these days we see that kind of chess more in open tournaments it seems!
2015 Aeroflot Open | A group | Round 1 results
| Title | Name | Rtg | Result | Title | Name | Rtg |
| GM | Mamedyarov Shakhriyar | 2756 | 1 - 0 | GM | Savchenko Boris | 2581 |
| IM | Bogdanovich Stanislav | 2581 | ½ - ½ | GM | Nepomniachtchi Ian | 2714 |
| GM | Rapport Richard | 2709 | 1 - 0 | IM | Bluebaum Matthias | 2576 |
| GM | Grigoriants Sergey | 2573 | ½ - ½ | GM | Vallejo Pons Francisco | 2708 |
| GM | Inarkiev Ernesto | 2706 | 1 - 0 | GM | Jumabayev Rinat | 2572 |
| GM | Esen Baris | 2571 | 0 - 1 | GM | Korobov Anton | 2694 |
| GM | Matlakov Maxim | 2693 | 0 - 1 | GM | Lu Shanglei | 2570 |
| GM | Yilmaz Mustafa | 2570 | 0 - 1 | GM | Sasikiran Krishnan | 2682 |
| GM | Fedoseev Vladimir | 2674 | 1 - 0 | GM | Sandipan Chanda | 2569 |
| GM | Stupak Kirill | 2567 | ½ - ½ | GM | Grachev Boris | 2673 |
| GM | Petrosian Tigran L. | 2671 | 1 - 0 | GM | Kotronias Vasilios | 2565 |
| GM | Oparin Grigoriy | 2562 | ½ - ½ | GM | Sjugirov Sanan | 2669 |
| GM | Kovalenko Igor | 2661 | 1 - 0 | GM | Can Emre | 2555 |
| GM | Mozharov Mikhail | 2555 | ½ - ½ | GM | Mamedov Rauf | 2658 |
| GM | Zvjaginsev Vadim | 2658 | 1 - 0 | GM | Gabuzyan Hovhannes | 2553 |
| IM | Wagner Dennis | 2549 | ½ - ½ | GM | Motylev Alexander | 2653 |
| GM | Khismatullin Denis | 2650 | ½ - ½ | GM | Ernst Sipke | 2530 |
| Predke Alexandr | 2530 | 0 - 1 | GM | Adhiban B. | 2646 | |
| GM | Kobalia Mikhail | 2632 | 1 - 0 | GM | Antipov Mikhail Al. | 2529 |
| GM | Al-Sayed Mohammed | 2511 | ½ - ½ | GM | Iturrizaga Bonelli Eduardo | 2630 |
| GM | Khairullin Ildar | 2630 | 1 - 0 | IM | Svane Rasmus | 2509 |
| GM | Gundavaa Bayarsaikhan | 2505 | 0 - 1 | GM | Dubov Daniil | 2627 |
| GM | Salgado Lopez Ivan | 2627 | 1 - 0 | GM | Batchuluun Tsegmed | 2499 |
| GM | Idani Pouya | 2496 | 0 - 1 | GM | Vidit Santosh Gujrathi | 2625 |
| GM | Sethuraman S.P. | 2623 | 0 - 1 | IM | Van Foreest Jorden | 2493 |
| IM | Sanal Vahap | 2487 | ½ - ½ | GM | Bukavshin Ivan | 2618 |
| GM | Tregubov Pavel V. | 2617 | ½ - ½ | GM | Ankit R. Rajpara | 2477 |
| GM | Vishnu Prasanna. V | 2477 | ½ - ½ | GM | Anton Guijarro David | 2614 |
| GM | Khalifman Alexander | 2613 | 1 - 0 | IM | Kuderinov Kirill | 2465 |
| IM | Tran Tuan Minh | 2455 | 0 - 1 | GM | Ponkratov Pavel | 2613 |
| GM | Potkin Vladimir | 2605 | 1 - 0 | FM | Tabatabaei M.Amin | 2448 |
| IM | Swayams Mishra | 2440 | ½ - ½ | GM | Salem A.R. Saleh | 2603 |
| GM | Goganov Aleksey | 2598 | ½ - ½ | IM | Kovalevskaya Ekaterina | 2438 |
| Korobkov Piotr | 2423 | ½ - ½ | GM | Shimanov Aleksandr | 2594 | |
| GM | Svetushkin Dmitry | 2592 | 1 - 0 | Asgarizadeh Ahmad | 2412 | |
| WGM | Abdumalik Zhansaya | 2379 | 0 - 1 | GM | Bok Benjamin | 2587 |
Previous report:
- Announcement: Aeroflot Open To Return In 2015
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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