Thursday 24 January 2013

The first round dream

While the first round of any big open is usually a one sided affair, it is always the dream of the lower rated player to pull of a sensational upset. As it is pretty rare that a 2200 rated player will get to play a 2700+ opponent, you have to grab these opportunities while you can.
In the 2013 Gibraltar tournament, there were a couple of 'semi' upsets in the first round, in that the top 2 seeds, Vassily Ivanchuk and Gata Kamsky were held to draws by their opponents. This of course had the added benefit (for the lower half of the tournament at least) of keeping them amongst the 2100-2200 pool of players for the second round, although both Ivanchuk and Kamsky did not slip up a second time.
As for the heroes of the first round, Hristos Zygouris (who drew with Ivanchuk) won his second round game, while Andreas Aerni (seen in action below), drew with GM Xue Zhao!

Aerni,Andreas (2206) - Kamsky,Gata (2740) [B22]
11th Gibraltar Masters Caleta ENG (1.2), 22.01.2013



 

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