Eleven players leading the GRENKE Open

Written by Georgios Souleidis on 02 April 2018.

At the GRENKE Chess Open, none of the players was able to take a decisive lead. After seven rounds and with the last day coming up, eleven players are in front with 6/7. There is a huge group of 33 players chasing the leaders. Many of them can still hope for a big part of the prize fund or even the tournament victory. One of the leaders is Germany’s top talent Vincent Keymer, who won his game against GM Rainer Buhmann. Best female is Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi (India) who is cruising towards the prize for the best female player. Ivan Farago (Hungary) is the best senior so far and Schachfreunde Deizisau holds the best team classification after seven rounds.

Vincent Keymer

On the first board in round seven, Maxime Lagarde (France) and Anton Korobov (Ukraine) played an exciting Najdorf. Lagarde seemed to have some advantage, but Korobov defended well and could attack the white king. In the end both players were happy with the draw after a rollercoaster game.

On the other top boards, Richard Rapport (Hungary) won against Dimitrij Kollars, Alexei Shirov (Latvia) scored a big point with the black pieces against Jonas Lampert. Dmitry Gordievsky (Russia) won his game against Bilel Bellahcene (France) and Hagen Poetsch won an nice game against Tamasz Banusz (Hungary).

Alexei Shirov

13-year old German prodigy Vincent Keymer also has six points, is playing his best tournament ever and is hunting for a GM norm. His trainer is GM Peter Leko, who is very pleased with the results of his pupil. The Hungarian grandmaster revealed during the live commentary oft he GRENKE Classic that he started training with Vincent in November 2017. Keymers win against Buhmann was a bit lucky though, because Buhmann avoided a repetition of moves, only to discover a few moves later that his position was lost.

The top pairings of Round 8:

GRENKE Chess YouTube

Text and Potos: Georgios Souleidis
Translation: Eric van Reem