First round of Aeroflot Open successful for Armenian chess players

February 10, 2010 - 11:58 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net -
From February 9 to 17 Moscow hosts the Aeroflot Open chess tournament, which is attended by 6 Armenian chess players.

The results of the first round:

Zaven Andriasyan - Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France) 0,5-0,5

Gabrielle Sarkissyan - Wijk Zhou (China) 0,5-0,5

Grant Melkoumian - Krishnan Sasikiran (India) 0,5-0,5

Arman Pashikyan - Renier Vazquez-Igarza (Spain) 1:0.

Tournament A2:

Tigran Kotanjyan - Jop Delemare (Holland) 0,5-0,5

Davit Petrosyan, Evgenia Ovod (Russia) 1:0.

Aeroflot Open chess tournament

The Aeroflot Open is an annual open chess tournament played in Moscow and sponsored by the airline Aeroflot. It was established in 2001 by Russian Airline Aeroflot, Association of Chess Federations and Russian Chess Federation, and quickly grew to be the strongest open tournament. The first edition counted around 80 grandmasters, while in the second edition already 150 grandmasters participated.

Aeroflot supports the chess tournament, providing flights for participants and donating money awards.

Aeroflot Open 2002 hosted 370 chess players from 34 countries, including 95 GMs. 476 chess players participated in the tournament next year. Number of participants increased to 644 in 2004. The tournament attracts more and more interest each year.

The tournament consists of 4 rounds (A1, A2, B and C) based on the participants’ ratings and is played in 9 rounds by Swiss system. The main interest is group A1, where the required rating is over 2550 and usually extra-class chess players are included in the group.