2012 Moscow Open won by Igor Lysyj and Marina Romanko

Moscow Open festival

The prestigious Russian State Social University

Outside was a beautful ice sculpture display with chess pieces

The classic Moscow Open was given renewed life and prestige as it was brought under the auspices of the Russian State Social University where it was held from January 27 to February 5, 2012. The main open is usually among the strongest opens in the world and also serves as a warmup for the Aeroflot Open which starts right after.

Among the VIP guests were Anatoly Karpov and FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

The RSSU expanded the number of events into a veritable festival with no fewer than nine individual competitions, with the main Open, the Women's Open, student and amateur events, as well as the Fifth World Cup of Problem Solving, a Shogi (Japanese chess) tournament, a qualifier for the World Blitz Chess Championship, and a series of seminars to train FIDE instructors and arbiters. The RSSU guaranteed locale on their premises and a US$100,000 prize fund.

The guests are given a tour of the university

More than this, the organizers put together a very well organized website with reports by Maria Manakova, and a massive amount of pictures covering all the events taken by professional photographer Julia Manakova.

Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony lived up to the event with displays of traditional dances...

... and the Men in White.

The main open

The main event was attended by 190 players from fifteen countries, and included a staggering 62 grandmasters. There were no Elo limitations, so any ready for hard competition, or no qualms about being beaten up regularly, were welcome to participate.

The Elo-favorite was Ernesto Inarkiev, rated 2689, though forced to content himself with second place. First was GM Igor Lysyj (2633) with 7.5/9 with a 2847 perfomance, while tied with Inarkiev with 7.0/9 were GM Dmitry Kokarev, and untitled 15-year-old Urii Eliseev who had an impressive 2762 performance.

Igor Lysyj was the proud winner of the 2012 Moscow Open

The prize giving ceremony

The lovely prize givers

American GM Ray Robson came to play in both the Moscow Open and the Aeroflot
as training and preparation for the US Championship.

Concentration was the name of the game

I'm telling you, the engine is wrong

Final standings of main open

Women's Open

The Women's Cup of Russia event was also a nine-round siwss with 154 players, inlcuding 14 grandmasters. The tournament went to the tape and was only decided in the last round when Russian Marina Romanko was the only one among the group of leaders to decide her game and first prize. Six players tied for places second through seventh with 7.0/9, with Chinese Gian Huang in second by tiebreak followed by Daria Charochkina.

The prize-winning podium of the Women's event

Hmm... That looks exactly like the third game of Fischer-Spassky.

The traditional garb is still worn with pride

The start of a lifelong rivalry or friendship?

Things that make you go 'Hmmm!'

Let's see...King's Indian? Nimzo? Fool's Mate!

It isn't all just established champions or rising stars

Hou has company

The old and the new

So young and so serious

Armenian WGM Evgeniya Doluhanova

Final standings of the Women's event

The Fifth World Cup of Problem Solving

The judges in the problem solving competition

The competition brought in 37 solvers from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Armenia and Azerbaijan. After a hard struggle first place went to Georgii Evseev (Russia), who collected 88.5 points out of a possible 120. This is the second consecutive victory in this tournament for Evseev. In second place was Evgeny Viktorov (Russia) with 72.25 points and third was Peter Murdzya (Poland) with 71.5 points.

The competition brought in several star problem solvers and was won by multiple
world champion Georgii Evseev.

Even the world of problem solving is seeing an influx of younger and younger talents

And the ladies, such as WGM Eugenia Chasonikova, are not about to allow men to
steal the show.

Shogi competition

Shogi has a unique characteristic of allowing you to place the pieces captured as
new weapons of your own.

Training seminars

There were numerous training seminars given by Lobach P.V., Umanskaya E.E., A.S.Nikitin, and professor Wiseman N.P. in the trainers section. T.Tzorbatzoglou from Greece gave a course on tournament organization, and finally A.Filipowicz gave one on arbiters.

Alexander Nikitin was once the long-time trainer of none other than Garry Kasparov
and co-authored a classic book with the champion on the Sicilian Schveningen.

The seminars were well attended

World Blitz Qualifier

Three players qualified for the next World Championship in Blitz chess: GM Nikolai Chadaev, Vasily Papin, and Andrey Rychagov.

Photos by the Russian Chess Federation and Julia Manakova (Moscow Open site)

Links Official tournament site Games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client and get immediate access. Or you can get our latest Fritz 13 program, which includes six months free premium membership to Playchess.

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