Eight edition of Dos Hermanas starts tonight

The world's biggest internet tournament will have its eigth edition starting tonight. The tournament, which was won last year by GM Fabian Doettling (before e.g. Carlsen and Kamsky) traditionally exists of twelve seperate twelve-round Swiss qualifiers using the Fischer System playing rate: 4 minutes + 1 seconds. The 12 qualifier winners plus the 20 best scores qualify to the 32 KO final. All qualifiers are open for everyone, you only have to sign-up for a free trial-account(!). The tournament has a prize-fund of 7700 EUR and the winner takes EUR 1800.

On the participants list we can see already some interesting names, but as you can apply until the last day of the qualifiers there's always a hotshot showing up last-minute. For now we have spotted:

Shahriyar Mamedyarov (2754) Gata Kamsky (2705) Hikaru Nakamura (2651) Zhang Zhong (2618) Alexey Korotylev (2615) Ian Nepomniachtchi (2587)

Hopefully this year less people will try to cheat. As last year's original winner, GM Ni Hua was disqualified after the tournament for cheating.

If you want to prepare for this year's event, last year's games can be found here.

We'll keep you updated! "^Reports^"Blitz, Online chess"^^1174069857^1314786230^forest "Wang Yue (shared) 1st at Cappelle la Grande"^"Last week at the Cappelle la Grande open tournament, a group of six GM's (David Arutinian, Yuri Drozdovskij, Vugar Gashimov, Evgenij Mirosnichenko, Wang Yue and Vasily Yemelin) ended shared first with 7/9. On tiebreak Wang Yue won the event. Earlier I wrote that the Aeroflot open is the strongest open tournament in the world, but Cappelle might be the biggest. More than 600 people from 57 different countries participated, amongst them 93 GMs and 80 IMs!

Cappelle la Grande

Google Map: Cappelle la Grande

The winners:

David Arutinian

Yuri Drozdovskij

Vugar Gashimov

Evgenij Mirosnichenko

Wang Yue

Vasily Yemelin

Final standings 23rd Cappelle la Grande open:

 1. Wang Yue                    g  CHN 2644   7.0     2784
 2. Miroshnichenko, Evgenij     g  UKR 2632   7.0     2753
 3. Gashimov, Vugar             g  AZE 2658   7.0     2736
 4. Arutinian, David            g  GEO 2552   7.0     2688
 5. Drozdovskij, Yuri           g  UKR 2562   7.0     2681
 6. Yemelin, Vasily             g  RUS 2539   7.0     2616
 7. Bocharov, Dmitry            g  RUS 2602   6.5     2700
 8. Grigoriants, Sergey         g  RUS 2592   6.5     2669
 9. Petrosian, Suren            m  ARM 2391   6.5     2666
10. Landa, Konstantin           g  RUS 2596   6.5     2664
11. Wirig, Anthony              m  FRA 2433   6.5     2654
12. Postny, Evgeny              g  ISR 2616   6.5     2651
13. Ni Hua                      g  CHN 2632   6.5     2648
14. Dvoirys, Semen I            g  RUS 2534   6.5     2638
15. Brodsky, Michail            g  UKR 2597   6.5     2632
16. Moranda, Wojciech           m  POL 2468   6.5     2624
17. Chernyshov, Konstantin      g  RUS 2556   6.5     2611
18. Kryvoruchko, Yuriy          g  UKR 2592   6.5     2611
19. Ionov, Sergey               g  RUS 2522   6.5     2610
20. Oleksienko, Mikhailo        g  UKR 2541   6.5     2605
21. Rodshtein, Maxim            m  ISR 2520   6.5     2604
22. Maletin, Pavel              m  RUS 2527   6.5     2602
23. Rozentalis, Eduardas        g  LTU 2582   6.5     2601
24. Gareev, Timur               g  UZB 2551   6.5     2594
25. Orlov, Andrey               m  RUS 2447   6.5     2589
26. Gasanov, Eldar              m  UKR 2477   6.5     2588
27. Shneider, Aleksandr         g  UKR 2532   6.5     2570
28. Kovalev, Andrei             g  BLR 2533   6.5     2559
29. Kravtsiv, Martyn               UKR 2464   6.5     2545
30. Dumitrache, Dragos-Nicolae  m  ROM 2455   6.5     2539
31. Warakomski, Tomasz          f  POL 2486   6.5     2516
32. Danielian, Elina            m  ARM 2426   6.5     2418
33. Fedorchuk, Sergey A         g  UKR 2601   6.5     2642
34. Bobras, Piotr               g  POL 2542   6.0     2635
35. Golod, Vitali               g  ISR 2597   6.0     2629
36. Vovk, Andrey                m  UKR 2487   6.0     2627
37. Spraggett, Kevin            g  CAN 2633   6.0     2598
38. Georgiev, Vladimir          g  MKD 2525   6.0     2586
39. Hammer, Jon Ludvig          f  NOR 2360   6.0     2575
40. Radulski, Julian            g  BUL 2475   6.0     2574
41. Burmakin, Vladimir          g  RUS 2568   6.0     2567
42. Gharamian, Tigran           m  FRA 2477   6.0     2565
43. Gagunashvili, Merab         g  GEO 2611   6.0     2562
44. Vovk, Yuri                  m  UKR 2497   6.0     2560
45. Sumets, Andrey              g  UKR 2533   6.0     2535
46. Gutman, Gennadi             g  UKR 2490   6.0     2529
47. Abergel, Thal               m  FRA 2475   6.0     2520
48. Timoshenko, Georgy          g  UKR 2563   6.0     2516
49. Akesson, Ralf               g  SWE 2475   6.0     2514
50. Wang Hao                    g  CHN 2619   6.0     2513

Here you'll find the full final standings.

If you want to score a norm, you should play Cappelle. No less than 18 results (!) were achieved:

IM & GM-norm: Jon Ludvig Hammer GM-norm: Orlov Andrey, David Pruess, Maxium Rodshtein, Pavel Maletin, Anthony Wirig, Andrey Vovk, Suren Petrosian and Wojciech Moranda IM-norm: Cossin Sebastien, Dirk van Dooren, Zbigniew Strzemiecki, Tomasz Warakomski and Eva Repkova WGM-norm: Chulivska Vita WIM-norm: Sandu Mihaela and Arlette van Weersel

Here you'll find the decisive games of the top boards in the last round for replay.



Thanks to The Closet Grandmaster the following great game by David Smerdon caught my eye: