After five played rounds, GM Daniil Yuffa remained the only player with the perfect score of 5/5 points, keeping the sole lead in the tournament.
GM Daniil Yuffa (ESP, 2654) had luck on his side today and defeated GM Jorden Van Foreest (NED, 2676) after a thrilling game with lots of turnovers. Van Foreest had a clearly better position after the opening, but both players had a couple of mistakes and the positional occasionally looked equal. After Yuffa’s 24…Rab8?, Jorden Van Foreest had a decisive advantage and transposed into an endgame with a clear pawn up. It seemed that it is the matter of technique how White takes a victory, but Van Foreest shocked with a piece blunder with 36.f3? and Daniil Yuffa got the winning position. Just a few moves later, Van Foreest was forced on resignation.
Four players follow the leader trailing by half a point: GM Robert Hovhannisyan (ARM, 2630), GM Gabriel Sargissian (ARM, 2628), GM Aryan Tari (NOR, 2621) and GM Mahammad Muradli (AZE, 2584).
GM Mahammad Muradli (AZE, 2584) was victorious against GM David Navara (CZE, 2663). The game started with Muradli being late for 11 minutes, but he got better on time after just 18 moves and reached a better position too. Navara equalized at some point, but being low on time, he made a couple of mistakes, allowing Muradli to enter a winning endgame. The Azerbaijani grandmaster was precise and took a win to score 4.5 points and be among four tyers for the second place.
GM Robert Hovhannisyan (ARM, 2630) defeated GM Francesco Sonis (ITA, 2570) with Black pieces in a very attractive game enriched with tactical motives. Honhannisyan developed a Kingside attack, sacrificed a piece, then a Rook, and finally ended up hunting Sonis’s King in the center. After just 34 moves of play, Francesco Sonis resigned, and Robert Hovhannisyan reached 4.5 points.
GM Gabriel Sargissian (ARM, 2628) was victorious against GM Ido Gorshtein (ISR, 2569). Sargissian quickly equalized with Black pieces, and then gradually improved his position gaining a clear advantage after sacrificing the exchange. Gorshtein’s pieces were basically stalemated, and he resigned.
GM Aryan Tari (NOR, 2621) was convincing against GM Gergely Kantor (HUN, 2563). Tari achieved an advantage in the early stage of the middlegame and then gradually improved his position to eventually enter a winning endgame, scoring impressive positional win.
During today’s live stream, our host GM Alojzije Jankovic hosted former European Chess Champion GM Bartlomiej Macieja who joined in the analysis of the games.
Our followers could join the poll and answer the question “Who was the first European Chess Champion” choosing one of the four options: Emil Sutovsky, Bartlomiej Macieja, Pavel Tregubov or Vasyl Ivanchuk. Most of the voters (46% of them) voted for Vasyl Ivanchuk, Emil Sutovsky had 22% of votes, Pavel Tregubov had 19% of votes, and Barlomiej Macieja had 13% of votes. Our host, WIM Lena Miladinovic revealed in the end that GM Pavel Tregubov was the first European Chess Champion, winning the 1st European Chess Championship in Saint Vincent, Italy, back in 2000. The event had 120 players, and four of them finished with the score of 8/11, but Tregubov had the best tiebreaks to clinch gold.
The 6th round starts tomorrow at 15:00 (local time), and it is the final round before the free day. Live games and live video broadcast will be available on the ECU TV platform.
All pairings, results and rankings can be found here.