Eduardo Iturrizaga and Marta García won the 2022 Spanish Championships. The event was a 9-round Swiss open played on August 11-19 at the RL Aníbal Hotel in Linares, Andalusia. Iturrizaga, who transferred to Spain only last year, won his second consecutive title, while Garcia, 22, achieved her first triumph in the women’s championship. | Photos: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/federacionespanoladeajedrez/">Spanish Chess Federation Facebook page</a>
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A large chasing group
After 5 rounds, Karen Movsziszian was leading the standings table as the only player with a perfect 5/5 score. The Armenian veteran suffered his first loss in round 6, when Marc Narciso defeated him with the white pieces. José Cuenca also won in round 6, and went on to face Narciso that same day (two rounds were played daily from Thursday to Sunday) the eventual winner of the event scored a second consecutive victory to take the sole lead.
Going into the penultimate round, there was a 3-player chasing pack a half point behind the leader, with Cuenca facing Bernat Serarols on board 1 and Movsziszian playing top seed Miguel Santos on board 2. Both games finished drawn, which allowed three more players to join the chasing pack going into Sunday afternoon’s final round.
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Barcelona wins first official Hybrid Chess tournament
Hybrid Chess is a new form of referee-supervised competition that has recently been officially recognised by FIDE and that is Elo-rated. The players are in public places, but the games are played over the internet. Last weekend, the first official and FIDE-rated Hybrid Chess tournament took place.
Teams from four cities played matches on four boards with classical time control. The increment was 35 seconds instead of the usual 30 seconds as the players had to make the moves for their opponents on their own board. Electronic DGT boards were used and the games were played online on Lichess. Eleven grandmasters took part and all of them were asked to answer a questionnaire.