Harikrishna, Jones Lead At Tepe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament
Gawain Jones and Pentala Harikrishna are sharing the lead at the Tepe Sigeman & Co Tournament in Malmo, Sweden with two rounds to go. Both players are on a plus-two score, and a full point ahead of the rest.
You can follow the final rounds of this tournament from 2 p.m. CEST (8 a.m. Eastern, 5 a.m. Pacific) on Wednesday and noon CEST (6 a.m. Eastern, 3 a.m. Pacific) on Thursday with commentary by GM Yasser Seirawan and GM Stellan Brynell at Twitch.tv/ChesscomEvents.
Four rounds have been played since our initial report last Friday that covered the first round. Lots of interesting chess was played since then.
On Saturday, the tournament saw the first upset as Tiger Hillarp Persson, at 48 the oldest player and lowest seed in the tournament, defeated third-seeded Ivan Saric.
Hillarp Persson, mostly known outside Sweden for his influential opening book Tiger's Modern from 2004 (which he later updated), played a good game that started as an English but soon resembled the Nimzo-Indian.
A key moment was move 22, when the positionally valid pawn break f2-f4 could have been refuted tactically, but both players missed a detail in their calculations.
A day later the fun was over for the Swedish grandmaster, who has been playing the Kan Sicilian instead of "his" Modern so far. He never really got equality out of the opening, even though his opponent Parham Maghsoodloo hadn't prepared at all for this game due to a misunderstanding.
As it turned out, the Iranian had accidentally prepared for the other Swedish participant, Nils Grandelius. (Luckily for Maghsoodloo, he played Grandelius anyway, also with White, the very next day.)
In round three, Pentala Harikrishna also showed more of his endgame skills that got him so many points in his previous tournament, the Shenzen Masters. The Indian GM beat Grandelius as Black in great style and thus joined Jones in first place, with both scoring 2/3.
"Hari" also won in the endgame the next day. This time he played his 14-year-old compatriot Nihal Sarin, who had started with draws against Saric, Nisipeanu and Jones.
The young grandmaster was very close to drawing his fourth game as well, but eventually lost a highly instructive opposite-colored bishop endgame where Harikrishna didn't play flawlessly.
Jose Raul Harikrishna extracts another point from minimalist surroundings. Tremendous eye for endgame possibilities he has developed.
— Jonathan Tisdall (@GMjtis) May 6, 2019
Jones kept the pace with Hari as he defeated his opponent in an endgame.
"It got quite messy," the English GM admitted.
He was referring to the time-trouble phase in his game with Saric, where it was the Croatian who made the last mistake.
Looks like the Sicilian is popular @tepesigeman . Today is round 4, just over the half way point pic.twitter.com/aIBG26Gpwj
— Sue Maroroa (@WIM_Maroroa) May 6, 2019
Sarin bounced back strongly from his loss with the following win against Maghsoodloo in the battle of the youngsters. What a nice way to trap the black queen!
Hillarp Persson today suffered another loss in his Kan Sicilian, this time against his compatriot Grandelius, who improved his head-to-head score to 4-0, with three draws. But win or lose, Tiger always plays entertaining games.
2019 Tepe Sigeman & Co Tournament | Round 5 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Pts | SB |
| 1 | Harikrishna, Pentala | 2730 | 2791 | 1 | 1 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 3.5 | 7.25 | ||||
| 2 | Jones, Gawain | 2702 | 2812 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 3.5 | 7.25 | ||||
| 3 | Grandelius, Nils | 2688 | 2666 | 0 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 2.5 | 6 | ||||
| 4 | Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | 2667 | 2649 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 2.5 | 6 | ||||
| 5 | Nihal, Sarin | 2598 | 2692 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 2.5 | 5.75 | ||||
| 6 | Maghsoodloo, Parham | 2671 | 2584 | ½ | 0 | ½ | 0 | 1 | 2 | 5 | ||||
| 7 | Hillarp Persson, Tiger | 2563 | 2618 | ½ | 0 | ½ | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4.5 | ||||
| 8 | Saric, Ivan | 2694 | 2503 | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | 0 | 1.5 |
The round five official broadcast.
The Tepe Sigeman & Co Tournament is celebrating its 25th edition this year with an extended playing field. Eight players (up from six) are competing in what is now a seven-round tournament, held May 3-9 at Malmo Live in Malmo, Sweden.
Round six on Wednesday will start 2 p.m. local time (8 a.m. Eastern, 5 a.m. Pacific) with the games Harikrishna-Nisipeanu, Maghsoodloo-Saric, Grandelius-Sarin and Hillarp Persson-Jones.
The final round, on Thursday will start noon local time (6 a.m. Eastern, 3 a.m. Pacific) with the games Jones-Harikrishna, Nisipeanu-Maghsoodloo, Saric-Grandelius, Sarin-Hillarp Persson.
You can follow the final rounds of this tournament from 2 p.m. CEST (8 a.m. Eastern, 5 a.m. Pacific) on Wednesday and noon CEST (6 a.m. Eastern, 3 a.m. Pacific) on Thursday with commentary by GM Yasser Seirawan and GM Stellan Brynell at Twitch.tv/ChesscomEvents.
Previous report:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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