€29.90
A convincing victory
In our last report, after round 8, Ivan Cheparinov and Jules Moussard were sharing the lead on 6½ points. The co-leaders faced each other in the penultimate round and shared the point after 40 moves. That same day, Jaime Santos joined them atop the standings thanks to a fine strategic effort that gave him a win over top seed Anton Korobov. Thus, three players entered the last round sharing first place.
Santos had the black pieces against Moussard, and the players decided to call it a day early on by repeating the position three times before reaching move 20. Cheparinov, who arrived in Sitges as the second seed, had the chance to clinch tournament victory by beating Matthieu Cornette with the black pieces and that is exactly what he did, as he outplayed the Frenchman out of a Sicilian Defence.
€29.90
A young American talent
As stated at the US Chess Champs website, Hans Niemann started playing chess at a Leonardo School when he was 8 years old and living in the Netherlands. He moved back to California at the end of 2012 and his rating quickly jumped from 1000 to 2200 in his two years there, where he became the youngest player to ever win the long-standing Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club Tuesday Night Marathon (the oldest US Chess Club, founded in 1855).
The 17-year-old talent is having a great run at the Sunway Sitges tournament near Barcelona, as he has so far collected 6½ points after 9 rounds. His great performance is enough to meet all the requirements to receive the grandmaster title!