Yakubboev Grabs $30,000 Check At Abu Dhabi Masters

GM Nodirbek Yakubboev won the 2024 Abu Dhabi Chess Festival's Masters tournament and the $30,000 check that belonged to it. The Uzbek grandmaster edged out GMs David Paravyan, Shamsiddin Vokhidov, Amin Tabatabaei, Leon Luke Mendonca, and IM Daniel Quizon on tiebreaks.

The very strong 30th edition of the Abu Dhabi Chess Festival took place August 14-25 in the five-star St. Regis Abu Dhabi Corniche Hotel and included many different events, including tournaments for children, juniors and seniors, government departments, and embassies.

The main event, the Masters, was a nine-round Swiss with 217 participants from 46 different federations, including 50 grandmasters. Finishing in a group of six players on seven points, Yakubboev won the tournament on Buchholz: the amount of points scored by his opponents multiplied by his own score. His was half a point more than Paravyan's, a tiny difference of almost $20,000, since the other players in the tie shared their prizes:

Yakubboev's fortune followed a solid but not spectacular tournament in which he remained undefeated. The Uzbek grandmaster started with three wins against players rated under 2500 and later scored 2.5/3 against players rated under 2600, while drawing with the three 2600 players he faced.

His game in the third round was nice:

In the final round, Yakubboev was under pressure against Mendonca, who definitely had some  chances to win that hefty first prize himself but let his opponent get away:

The other Uzbek on the podium, Vokhidov, was even closer to tournament victory. He won a pawn early in his game with Paravyan and eventually reached a winning rook endgame but failed to convert. What a difference a check makes!

The odd name in the group of players at the top is Quizon from the Philippines, the only non-grandmaster on seven points. With a performance rating of 2749 against a field that included six GMs, that was clearly enough for a GM norm.

In the final round, he beat the strong Indian grandmaster Narayanan S.L. in a King's Indian:

One of the side events was a strong online blitz event that consisted of an 11-round Swiss followed by a knockout, eventually won by GM Hikaru Nakamura. Below you can see him streaming the event.

The 30th Abu Dhabi Chess Festival 2024 Masters took place August 15-24, 2024, in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The format was a nine-round Swiss. The time control was 90 minutes for the entire game plus a 30-second increment starting on move one. The prize fund was $63,600.