Photo: www.bilbaofinalmasters.com
Levon Aronian is participating in a major tournament before joining Armenia for the Chess Olympiad
Armenia’s top chess player Levon Aronian, who is due to lead his nation at the Olympiad later this month, enters Monday’s Round 4 of a 2010 Grand Slam Masters Final tournament sharing the lead with Spain’s Alexei Shirov.
In the first half of the four-man competition played in Shanghai, China, that ended on Sunday Aronyan beat Chinese chessman Wang Hao with black pieces, drew with Shirov (with whites) and with Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik (with blacks).
Kramnik and Wang Hao followed in the third and fourth positions, with 3 points and 1 point, respectively.
The first part of the 2010 Grand Slam Masters Final continues through September 8 in Shanghai. The four grandmasters are playing for two qualification spots for Part Two to be played in Bilbao, Spain, October 9-15.
India’s Viswanathan Anand and Norway’s Magnus Carlsen will join the Shanghai winners in the second and final four-player double round-robin tournament.
(The rate of play at the Masters Final is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 60 minutes to finish the game, with 10 extra seconds per move from move number 41. Organizers use both the “Sofia Rule” (players are not allowed to agree a draw without the arbiter’s permission) and the “football” scoring system: players get 3 points for winning a game, 1 point for drawing and 0 points for losing.)
Later this month Aronian will join his Armenia teammates for the 39th World Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, commencing on September 21.
In Aronian’s absence, the members of the Armenian team (the winner of the last two Olympiads in 2006 and 2008) GMs Vladimir Hakobyan, Gabriel Sargsyan, Arman Pashikyan and Avetik Grigoryan (led by the senior coach of the team GM Arshak Petrosyan) have been in final two-week preparations for the biannual event in the Armenian resort town of Jermuk since September 1, reports Armenian chess portal ArmChess.
Armenia’s women chess players coached by GM Ashot Anastasyan are also having preparations in Jermuk. The team for the Khanty-Mansiysk Olympiad includes WGMs Elina Danielyan, Lilit Mkrtchyan, Lilit Galoyan, Nelly Aghinyan and WFM Anahit Kharatyan.
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