Round 7 & Football

Round 7 was another very interesting affair yesterday, as all 3 top boards were decisive. On board 1 Bassem Amin scored another very convincing win against Erwin l’Ami, taking his total to an impressive 6.5/7! On board 2 Robin van Kampen avoided early simplifications, but was later outplayed by Arkadij Naiditsch. On board 3 finally…

Details

Even Steven blitz won by Vova

Yesterday the Even Steven blitz tournament was held. This is the 2nd year that we try this format for a blitz tournament and in general people seem to be happy with it. The format is a time handicap so that the stronger player in some cases has to play with 1 minute vs 9 minutes…

Details

Rounds 5 & 6

We saw another round of extremely interesting and fighting chess at Harpa yesterday as all of the top 5 boards were decisive. On board 1 Robin van Kampen beat Richard Rapport in what was probably one of the most exciting games of the day. In yet another Pirc (the amounts of Pircs we have seen…

Details

Colovic, Canadians & ChessVibes writing

More blogging from our Canadian visitors….please scroll down to see the latest blogging from them: http://annexchessclub.com/2014/03/toronto-players-in-reykjavik/ I also saw that Alex Colovic had a nice blog about his experience and his deja-vu Norweigan matchups: http://www.alexcolovic.com/ Both of these cover the Golden Circle trip which so many of our guests took. Finally I would like to point out…

Details

Round 4

Round 4 of the Reykjavik Open was played yesterday and we saw many exciting and decisive games on the top boards. On board 1 we had a small upset as Canadian GM Eric Hansen outplayed third seed GM Ferenc Berkes in a very nice game. On board 2 Richard Rapport scored yet another victory (over…

Details

Rounds 2 & 3

Today was the double round here at Reykjavik Open and what an eventful day that was… This morning at around 11 o’clock, while most games were only just getting out of the opening phase, the fire alarm went off and the whole Harpa building had to be evacuated! Seeing around 300 people waiting just outside…

Details

Fire & Ice

After a totally grueling double round day we have 13 players on 3 out of 3. After a rather smooth first round for most of the higher rated players, rounds two and three presented some bigger challenges for the titled players in this tournament. In round 2 most of the top seeds won in clinical…

Details