Dubai Open: Lots of Attacking Chess, 3 Players Still Perfect

Three players started with 4.0/4 at the Dubai Open: GM David Howell of England, GM Nils Grandelius of Sweden and Yuri Solodovnichenko of Ukraine.

Dubai, the emirate with numerous shopping malls, very expensive hotel rooms and the tallest building in the world (among many other things!) hosted the 2014 World Rapid and Blitz Championship. It also has a long-running strong open tournament.

The 17th edition of the Dubai Open is currently under way. Four rounds have been played, and five more are scheduled. As always, the playing hall is the Dubai Chess and Culture Club. Today is a rest day, when a blitz tournament is organized.

The tournament is also named “the Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Al Maktoum Cup,” after the Deputy Ruler of Dubai and UAE Minister of Finance. The total prize fund is $50,000 with a $12,000 first prize. 

This attracted 152 participants from 39 federations, including 39 GMs and 22 IMs. The top seeds are GMs David Howell, Vladimir Fedoseev, Igor Kovalenko, Tigran Petrosian, Yuriy Kuzubov, Sergei Zhigalko, Mateusz Bartel, Ivan Ivanisevic, Eltaj Safarli and Eduardo Iturrizaga.

The first round of an open tournament is always good for a few David vs Goliath scenarios, and in Dubai this was also the case. The highest-ranked player to stumble was fifth seed GM Yuriy Kuzubov, who went down against Jobannie C. Tabada from the Philippines.

This wasn't your everyday upset. As Black Kuzubov played the Petroff (!), probably expecting to outplay his 400+ Elo-point-lower-rated opponent in any position. However, what he didn't count on is that Tabada turned out to be a very decent endgame player!

Local hero FM Saeed Ishaq managed to beat GM Eltaj Safarli from Azerbaijan in a nice attacking game that started with some unorthodox opening moves. It's not easy to reach a winning position after 15 moves against a GM when you start with the modest 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.e3...

And there were more. India’s Mokal Amruta Sunil, rated 2075(!), managed to win against Italian GM Daniele Vocaturo and the UAE’s Mayed Alrashedi (1852!) held Indian GM R.R. Laxman to draw.

Let's continue the attacking theme with the following game. GM Sahaj Grover beat WGM Zeinab Mamedjarova quickly from a Spanish Four Knights where the theme was: a knight on f5 is worth a lot. At least a piece.

And... another attack. After his first-round loss Kuzubov fought back and scored three consecutive wins. The third was against Egyptian IM Mohamed Ezat, and it didn't last long:

By now most chess fans are aware that GM Tigran Petrosian is a player from Armenia bearing the same name as the ninth world champion. In Dubai an Armenian IM named Manuel Petrosyan is playing, who almost held GM Igor Kovalenko to a draw.

Knight endings can be extremely tricky. This one looks like a theoretical draw, but after 140 moves the white player had to throw in the towel.

GM David Howell moved to 4.0/4 with a quick and sharp win over GM Sergey Volkov. This Chebanenko Slav quickly became very concrete, but 15...Qe7 was already a big mistake.

2015 Dubai Open | Round 4 Standings (Top 20)

(Full standings here.)