At the start of the round the Armenians were sitting pretty at the top but Sergei Movsesian and Robert Hovhannysian had to play each other in the 4th round. They made a relatively short draw most likely because of their friendship but perhaps the fact that Man Utd were playing in the Champions League was a factor for Sergei 😉
Movsesian didn’t hide his allegiance in the 4th round!
This opened the door for other players to catch up. On board 2 Nils Grandelius seized the opportunity when he faced the star of the 3rd round, Gupta Prithu. This time around however the aggression backfired and Nils seized his chance!
The red hot Grandelious moved into the joint leader position after the 4th round
Another playing using the change to join the leaders was young Alireza Firouzja. Just like Nils he had the black pieces and won a very smooth game against his Polish GM counterpart. Alireza must be considered on the favourites in the tournament!
Some other player moving to 3.5 out of 4 were Christian Lupulescu who took advantage of a mistake by his opponent, Pragganandhaa, and Matthieu Cornette who beat Mircea Emilian-Parligras. Vladimir Potkin also joined the group along with local GM’s Hannes Stefansson and birthday boy Bragi Thorfinnsson. Bragi celebrated his birthday with a nice win against Norwegian GM Johan Sebastian-Christansen
Bragi celebrated his birthday with a nice win
Finally there was a very exciting game between Fabien Libiszewski and Aryan Tari ….at several points Fabi was down a rook but figuring the position out was next to impossible and both players in heavy timetrouble!
For other results in round 4 on the top boards:
Standings after the 4th round
In the 5th round things will start to heat up on the top boards!
Live games can be watched on several of the popular platforms such as Chess24, Chessbomb, Followchess and on the tournament homepage.
Live commentary by Fiona Steil-Antoni and Ingvar Johannesson starts 2 hours into the round!
Photos
