33 people took their place during the first round of our Christmas tournament this year, all ready for a seven round tournament with a 5+3 time control. Each of them was ready for a pleasant evening with lots of genial moves, interesting openings and, of course, the occasional blunder. With a lot of very good players ready to take up arms – including our ETH Chess Champion – it was anyone’s guess who would end up on top in this tournament.
The first two round went by relatively uneventful for our top players, with no surprises on the first boards and the favorites winning their games. In the third round the first real clash happened as Kirill – the ETH Champion – had the white pieces against Anton – the winner of last tournament. Kirill eventually secured the game, leaving Anton at 2 points and resulting in only three players with all points – Kirill, Batu and Hongwei.
In the fourth and fifth round it became clear that the high level of the players would make contention for the first place very exciting. In the fourth round, Hongwei lost against Dorian, and Batu was able to beat Kirill. This left Batu as the sole leader after four rounds with a lead of 0.5 points against his closest competitor – Dorian. However, the fifth round would immediately crush the hopes of Batu to stay undefeated, as Dorian beat him, making Dorian now the sole leader after five rounds. In the meantime, Yun was making an impressive comeback by winning all games from round 2-5, making the playing field even more exciting as we went in the last two rounds.
Staying leader for more than one round seemed impossible in this tournament as Dorian now lost against Anton, completing the circle Anton > Dorian > Batu > Kirill > Anton and ensuring that the battle for the first place would only be decided in the last round, where the first two boards pitched those four players against each other – Anton vs Batu and Kirill vs Dorian. Both Batu and Kirill won their games, leaving them tied for the first place, but due to a slighter better tie-break for Kirill, he took home the first place. Batu ended second, Anton third and Chaojie, Tim and Yun fell just besides the podium despite an equal score with Anton.
Thank you everyone for the participation, we hope you enjoyed it! Below is the final ranking, together with some picture 🙂
| Rank | Name | Score | BH | BH-C1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kirill Zaitsev | 6.0 | 31.0 | 30.0 |
| 2 | Mustafa Batuhan Iliev | 6.0 | 30.5 | 28.5 |
| 3 | Anton Hul | 5.0 | 30.0 | 28.0 |
| 4 | Chaojie Li | 5.0 | 29.0 | 26.0 |
| 5 | Tim Vaughan-Whitehead | 5.0 | 26.0 | 24.5 |
| 6 | Yun Pan | 5.0 | 25.5 | 24.5 |
| 7 | Dorian Quelle | 4.5 | 30.5 | 29.5 |
| 8 | Lorenzo Vettor | 4.5 | 28.0 | 26.0 |
| 9 | Jasper Dekoninck | 4.5 | 27.5 | 25.5 |
| 10 | Daria Bangerter | 4.5 | 24.0 | 22.5 |
| 11 | Giacomo Colombo | 4.0 | 29.5 | 26.5 |
| 12 | Hongwei | 4.0 | 29.0 | 27.5 |
| 13 | Yongzhe Zhuang | 4.0 | 27.0 | 25.5 |
| 14 | Agoston Györffy | 4.0 | 25.0 | 23.0 |
| 15 | Alexander Meili | 4.0 | 22.5 | 21.5 |
| 16 | Emilio Grandinetti | 3.5 | 24.0 | 22.5 |
| 17 | Elia Steinfeld | 3.5 | 23.0 | 21.0 |
| 18 | Joshua Müller | 3.5 | 22.0 | 21.0 |
| 19 | Ahmad Mahmood | 3.5 | 20.5 | 19.0 |
| 20 | Joshua Dreier | 3.0 | 26.0 | 23.0 |
| 21 | David Olival Ferreira | 3.0 | 25.0 | 23.0 |
| 22 | Martin Soldani | 3.0 | 24.0 | 21.5 |
| 23 | Giorgio Gatti | 3.0 | 18.5 | 17.5 |
| 24 | Nahin Khan | 3.0 | 17.0 | 15.5 |
| 25 | Nicola Kong | 3.0 | 15.5 | 14.5 |
| 26 | Simone Sanchi | 3.0 | 13.0 | 12.0 |
| 27 | Alberto Pacati | 2.0 | 26.5 | 24.0 |
| 28 | Javier Alejo | 2.0 | 24.0 | 23.0 |
| 29 | Valters Jẽkabs Yakrevskis | 2.0 | 24.0 | 21.5 |
| 30 | Constantin Schalast | 2.0 | 22.5 | 21.5 |
| 31 | Chamith Karannagodage | 2.0 | 22.5 | 21.0 |
| 32 | Alexander Krauß | 1.5 | 22.0 | 21.0 |
| 33 | Yann Spillmann | 1.5 | 20.5 | 19.5 |
