Tag: Hasselbacken2016

The 5th round of the Hasselbacken Open 2016 saw the top two games viz. Mareco-Almasi and Maze-Smirin end peacefully. This allowed a whole bunch of players to move into joint lead. After 5 rounds of play, as many as 9 players, including Former World Championship Candidate GM Dmitry Andreikin and Indian GMs Sethuraman and Adhiban, are in lead with 4.5/5.

The highlight of the day, however, was teenage American GM Samuel Sevian’s spectacular victory over GM Alexei Shirov with the black pieces. The Latvian GM, typical to his style, played an interesting Rook sacrifice on move 21. However, he was unable to follow it up in the best of ways, thus ending up quite worse. Nevertheless, the position on the board was extremely complicated and it took Sevian a stunning Rook sacrifice to finally end up on the winning side.

In the 6th round of the event, top-seed GM Andreikin will take on GM Sethuraman while GM Adhiban is paired against GM Landa.

Round 5 Results

The Hasselbacken Chess Open commenced on 30th April, 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden. This 9-round swiss event, organized to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Stockholm Chess Society, has attracted more than 300 participants from all round the globe, who are fighting it out for the first prize of 50000 SEK. As many as 34 Grandmasters are participating in the event, with Former World Championship Candidate GM Dmitry Andreikin being the top seed.

After 4 rounds, a total of 5 Grandmasters – Mareco Sandro, Zoltan Almasi, Sebastien Maze, Ilia Smirin and Urkedal Frode – are in the lead with perfect scores of 4/4. Urkedal Frode, who was recently conferred with the title of Grandmaster, overcame the experienced Indian GM Krishnan Sasikiran in Round 4.

Amongst Indians, GMs Adhiban, Sethuraman and Vidit Gujrathi have notched up 3.5 points and are joint second with 16 other players.

Round 4 Results