Abu Dhabi Chess Festival: Norms, titles and more!

Photos by Abu Dhabi Festival Facebook page

The Abu Dhabi Chess Festival seems to have become a favourite of Indian chess players. In its 24th edition this year, the festival welcomed more than 150 players from India, a third of whom played in the Master’s Tournament. The festival not only included an extremely strong field in the Master’s section but also had an open event along with some other side events like a blitz and a family tournament.

The Masters Tournament featured as many as 12 players rated above 2600 and included some big names like Nigel Short, Rauf Mamedov, Anton Korobov etc. The Indian charge in this tournament comprised of 51 players of whom GM Abhijeet Gupta was the highest rated. Although Abhijeet was the fifth seeded player in the tournament, he was unable to give his best and finished 36^th on the final ranking list with a score of 5.5/9.

Nevertheless, most other Indians performed amazingly well. The 16-year-old GM Aryan Chopra (rated 2507 at the time of the tournament), who was seeded 35^th in the tournament, performed way above his current rating and finished third with a rating performance of 2683! On his way to the top, he beat several higher rated GMs and even drew against the fourth seeded Korobov in round 2!

Talking of norms, out of the seven players who achieved norms at the tournament, four were Indians! Along with Vignesh, Pune lad, Abhimanyu Puranik also scored a GM norm. Believe it or not, this seventeen-year-old boy achieved his norm with a round to spare. Starting out with a bang, Abhimanyu scored a win in the first round and held the sixth and the fourth seeds of the tournament, Constantin Lupulescu and Anton Korobov in the second and the third round respectively. Despite his loss in the final round, he finished with a rating performance of 2601 and earned 13.8 rating points. This means along with achieving his third and final GM norm, the boy will also cross Elo 2500 in the next month’s rating list, becoming India’s 49^th Grandmaster! You can read a full report on his achievement here.

Two other norms scored at the event were: an IM norm by Muthaiah AL and a WGM norm by Vantika Agrawal. Just like Abhimanyu, Muthaiah AL also scored his norm with a round to spare. One of his games that grabbed eyeballs was his round 6 win against GM Abhijeet Gupta. Scoring 5.0/9, Muthaiah gained 48 rating points and finished 40^th in the final standings.

Final Ranking after 9 Rounds

Open Section

The Open Tournament of the festival was another exciting affair.  After 9 gruelling rounds of battle, only three out of the top 10 seeds were actually able to finish among the top 10 in the final rankings! From the Indian contingent, three players finished among the top 10. The 20^th seeded Ketan Boricha finished 2^nd on the leaderboard. Out of his nine games, he only lost one; and that was against the tournament’s winner, Elshad Abdullayev. CM Nikhil Magizhnan and Mohammad Dilshad both scored 7.0/9 but after tie-breaks were applied, Nikhil was ranked 6^th while Dilshad was 10^th.

Final Ranking after 9 Rounds

Side Events

Besides the Masters and the Open, the Abu Dhabi Chess Festival also featured a few quirky side events like a blitz tournament, Homeland Protectors Tournament (A tournament open to members of military and police and national service), a Family Tournament (for teams of two players from the same family) and a simultaneous exhibition by GM Salem Saleh.

Blitz Tournament 

The blitz tournament featured three players rated above 2700. In fact, the top two seeds, Rauf Mamedov and Anton Korobov, were rated as high as 2796 and 2782 respectively. The Georgian GM Levan Pantsulaia, who is rated 2703, was the third seed. Crashing through this group of elite GMs, India’s GM Shardul Gagare, who was seeded 16^th in the tournament, finished third with 9.0/11. Gagare had actually tied for second but was awarded third place due to lower tie-break score.

En route to this fantastic finish, Shardul had to overcome a lot of hurdles. The first and third rounds were a nightmare for the young lad. In his very first game of the tournament, Shardul had to concede a draw to Saif Ahmed, a local player from UAE who was rated around 900 points below him. And then again, in round 3, he lost against the Vietnamese IM Nguyen Anh Khoi, who was also rated around 400 points below him. But after this, Gagare put the pedal to the metal and won seven out of his remaining eight games. The only game he couldn’t win was his eighth round game against the tournament’s top seed Anton Korobov, which ended in a draw. What was all the more impressive was that Shardul was able to defeat the 2703 rated Levan Pantsulaia and GM Abhijeet Gupta in his last two games.

Final Ranking after 11 Rounds

Family Tournament

The Family Tournament was another event where Indians dominated. Team Bartakke and Team Boricha conquered the top two spots. Amardeep Bartakke along with his son Aditya took the title prize with a score of 11/14. The father-son duo massed up four wins and three draws out of their seven games to get ahead of their rivals. Renowned Mumbai-based coach, Ketan Boricha, and his son Yohan also had an unbeaten run at the event. In the final standings, they were just one point behind the champions, having scored 10/14.

Final Ranking after 7 Rounds

About the Author

Related Articles

India gets its 49th Grandmaster - Abhimanyu Puranik!

Abu Dhabi Masters: 11-year-old Raunak Sadhwani holds Nigel Short