GM David Anton Guijarro emerged as the sole leader of the European Individual Chess Championship 2026 after eight played rounds!
GM David Anton Guijarro (ESP, 2656) today scored an important win over GM Jan Malek (POL, 2533) with the white pieces. The Spanish representative opted for positional play in the Queen’s Gambit opening, and earned the clear edge in the late middlegame. Pressured on the Kingside, Jan Malek made a decisive mistake with 34…g5? immediately giving the winning advantage to David Anton who needed only a few moves to convert it into a point.
David Anton is the only player on 7/8 points, but he is closely followed by a group of nine players who have 6.5/8 points each. The runner-ups are GM Ediz Gurel (TUR, 2635), GM Maxime Lagarde (FRA, 2621), GM Aydin Suleymanli (AZE, 2653), IM Roman Dehtiarov (UKR, 2452), GM Nijat Abasov (AZE, 2586), GM Nikolozi Kacharava (GEO, 2500), GM Nikita Meshkovs (LAT, 2532), GM Valery Kazakouski (LTU, 2572), and IM Benny Aizenberg (ISR, 2451).
Today’s round was opened by Managers of the Football team playing in Polish Extra League – President of the board of GKS Katowice Mr. Slawomir Witek, and GKS Katowice Football team coach Mr. Rafal Gorak, who performed the first ceremonial move on the sixth board in the game between David Anton Guijarro and Jan Malek.
All results, rankings and pairings can be found here.
Live video broadcast of the event is available on the ECU YouTube channel.