14 July 2021

Round One of FIDE World Cup Finished in Sochi

Chess heavyweights join the fray.

Photo credit: Anastasia Korolkova / FIDE
Photo credit: Anastasia Korolkova / FIDE

Tie-break of round one of FIDE World Cup finished July 14 at the Galaxy Entertainment And Leisure Complex of Krasnaya Polyana.

Favorite players have proven their class in the majority of matchups. Varuzhan Akobian (USA), Amin Tabatabaei (Iran), Haik Martirosyan, Hovhannes Gabuzyan (both - Armenia), D. Gukesh (India), Benjamin Bok (the Netherlands), Bobby Cheng (Australia), Susanto Megaranto (Indonesia), Evgeny Alekseev, Boris Savchenko (both from Russia), Hjørvar Steinn Gretarsson (Iceland), and Krikor Mekhitarian (Brazil) won their matches in the open tournament at the first stage "25 + 10".

The Egyptian Ahmed Adly’s defeat from his much lower-rated compatriot Abdelrahman Hesham has come as a surprise. Yet another unexpected result is the Russian Vadim Zvjaginsev going down to the international master Ravi Haria (England). 

In the women’s section, the first two rapid games favored Natalia Buksa, Anna Ushenina (both - Ukraine), Pauline Guichard (France), Nurgyul Salimova (Bulgaria), Hoang Thanh Trang (Hungary), and Jennifer Yu (USA). 

In the ten-minute games we should highlight the victory of the young Volodar Murzin (Russia) over the experienced grandmaster Viorel Iordachescu (Moldova). Besides, Federico Perez Ponsa (Argentina), Alexander Fier (Brazil), Timur Gareyev (USA) won their mini-matches. 

In the women’s section, Almira Skripchenko (France) and Karina Cyfka (Poland) qualified into round two. 

The most stubborn matches were N. Delgado Ramirez (Paraguay) — N. Murshed (Bangladesh) in the open tournament and G. Mammadova (Azerbaijan) — M. Narva (Estonia) in the women's tournament.

Neuris Delgado Ramirez was superior in both blitz games, and Gulnar Mammadova won 1.5:0.5.

Round two is scheduled on Thursday, July 15. The "seeded" chess players will join those who have won their round one matches: in the open tournament these are chess players with start numbers from 1 through 50, and in the women's tournament — from 1 through 25. 


Pairings

Photos

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