Aeroflot Open chess tournament closed

February 18, 2010 - 11:06 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net -
Aeroflot Open chess tournament closed in Moscow on February17. Armenia played a draw during tournaments A1 and A2.

Gabriel Sargissian ranks 12 (5.5 points). Hrant Melkumyan and Arman Pashikian rank 31 and 32 respectively with 5 points. Zaven Andriasian is the 62nd (4 points). The winner is Le Quang Liem, Vietnamese Grandmaster (9 points).

During tournament А2, Tigran Kotanjian scored 5 points and finished his participation in Aeroflot Open, ranking 25. Davit Petrosyan is on the 44th position (4 points). Aleksei Pribrezhni (Russia) leads Tournament A2, scoring 6.5 points.

Results of the last 9th round are as follows:

Tournament А1

Gabriel Sargissian – Artyom Timofeev (Russia) 0.5:0.5

Arman Pashikian - Ivan Salgado Lopez (Spain) 0.5:0.5

Hrant Melkumyan – Rauf Mamedov (Azerbaijan) 0.5:0.5

Zaven Andriasian – Luka Lenic (Slovenia) 0.5:0.5.

Tournament А2

Tigran Kotanjian – Emre Can (Turkey) 0.5:0.5

Davit Petrosian- Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (Russia) 0:1

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.