Korobov Wins Sunway Sitges Alongside Entertaining Tiebreaks
Leading the tournament from start to finish, Anton Korobov of Ukraine won the 5,000-euro first prize at the Sunway Sitges tournament. A series of entertaining blitz tiebreaks decided the lower prizes.
After his fine performance at the Grand Chess Tour event in Bucharest, Korobov also did quite well in Sitges. His 6/6 start was the foundation for his tournament victory.
After his draw with Vassily Ivanchuk in round seven, Korobov was still half a point ahead of the pack. Two players were trailing him: Vasif Durarbayli of Azerbaijan and Abhimanyu Puranik of India.
A draw with Durarbayli was enough for Korobov to keep the lead as Puranik lost his game in round eight. The leader's new opponent for the penultimate round was the American youngster Awonder Liang, who had surprisingly defeated Ivanchuk.
"I was already very happy when I saw the pairings," Liang said later on the live broadcast. "If you told me I would play Ivanchuk like any time in my life, that would just be amazing. That was why I came here, to be able to play great players like him."
Liang in the studio with Anna Rudolf.
To beat the other strong Ukrainian was too much to ask for Liang. Playing a Grand Prix Attack setup, the American's thematic pawn push f4-f5 was not correct as all ideas with Bh6 would be easy for Black to parry. Korobov said he was planning to sacrifice the exchange, and all of his remaining pieces would be strong while White wouldn't have a clear plan.
With his special kind of humor, Korobov discussed this game in the studio on the final day, after he had drawn his last-round game with German GM Andreas Heimann.
Korobov: "I played this because don't like to calculate."@DanielKingChess: "Does this mean you're more like a strategic player?"
— ChesscomNews (@ChesscomNews) December 22, 2019
Korobov: "I am just an old player!"https://t.co/2psh9VgMkv#SunwaySitges pic.twitter.com/Qx5DK0miHZ
Korobov in the studio with Daniel King.
The huge number of side events, already mentioned in our previous report, is just one example of how Oskar Stober Blazquez, the main organizer, does lots of things just a bit different than others.
The other big difference is how Stober deals with players finishing in a tie. Many open tournaments don't have a playoff, but having playoffs for second to eighth places is definitely rare. Only the Sants Open in Barcelona is an event we can think of that does something similar.
Adding to the show element, these tiebreaks are held outside on a terrace in front of the hotel with palm trees and the Mediterranean Sea as a splendid backdrop for a few dozen spectators.
For these tiebreaks only the top eight of the final standings were eligible play. Therefore, seven players were involved (as Korobov had ended clearly first). Before Durarbayli and Rasmus Svane played for second place, Heimann and Puranik had played with Amin Tabatabaei (Iran), Li Di (China) and Timur Gareyev (U.S.) for places four to eight.
2019 Sunway Sitges | Final Standings (Top 20)
| Rk. | SNo | Fed | Name | RtgI | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 |
| 1 | 3 | Korobov Anton | 2668 | 8,5 | 0 | 61,5 | 66,0 | |
| 2 | 18 | Durarbayli Vasif | 2609 | 8,0 | 0 | 60,0 | 65,0 | |
| 3 | 22 | Svane Rasmus | 2597 | 8,0 | 0 | 56,5 | 60,5 | |
| 4 | 11 | Tabatabaei M.Amin | 2635 | 7,5 | 1 | 59,0 | 63,5 | |
| 5 | 26 | Puranik Abhimanyu | 2580 | 7,5 | 2 | 60,0 | 64,5 | |
| 6 | 14 | Heimann Andreas | 2617 | 7,5 | 3 | 58,0 | 62,5 | |
| 7 | 35 | Li Di | 2543 | 7,5 | 4 | 59,5 | 64,5 | |
| 8 | 21 | Gareyev Timur | 2598 | 7,5 | 5 | 58,5 | 63,5 | |
| 9 | 17 | Karthikeyan Murali | 2611 | 7,5 | 0 | 57,0 | 61,5 | |
| 10 | 6 | Lagarde Maxime | 2655 | 7,5 | 0 | 57,0 | 61,5 | |
| 11 | 16 | Nihal Sarin | 2612 | 7,5 | 0 | 56,5 | 61,0 | |
| 12 | 19 | Adly Ahmed | 2607 | 7,5 | 0 | 56,5 | 60,5 | |
| 13 | 34 | Erigaisi Arjun | 2544 | 7,0 | 0 | 60,0 | 65,5 | |
| 14 | 9 | Donchenko Alexander | 2644 | 7,0 | 0 | 60,0 | 64,0 | |
| 15 | 27 | Wagner Dennis | 2578 | 7,0 | 0 | 59,5 | 63,5 | |
| 16 | 1 | Ivanchuk Vassily | 2690 | 7,0 | 0 | 59,0 | 63,0 | |
| 17 | 37 | Moradiabadi Elshan | 2539 | 7,0 | 0 | 57,5 | 62,5 | |
| 18 | 23 | Liang Awonder | 2593 | 7,0 | 0 | 57,0 | 62,0 | |
| 19 | 33 | Nasuta Grzegorz | 2545 | 7,0 | 0 | 57,0 | 61,0 | |
| 20 | 31 | Gukesh D | 2547 | 7,0 | 0 | 56,0 | 60,0 |
(Full final standings here.)
Because a lot of these matches went to armageddon after a score of 1-1 in the two blitz games, the spectators on-site and online, with commentary by Anna Rudolf and Daniel King, watched this "extra entertainment" for more than two hours.
Eventually Gareyev ended in eighth place (500 euro); Li, seventh (600 euro); Heimann, sixth (700 euro); Puranik, fifth (800 euro); Tabatabei, fourth (900 euro); Svane, third (1,500 euro); and Durarbayli, second (3,000 euro). Korobov won 5,000 euro.
The winners at #sunwaysitges! pic.twitter.com/bwihMJSsqG
— ChesscomNews (@ChesscomNews) December 22, 2019
All games from the tiebreaks:
The live broadcast of the tiebreaks.
The sixth Sunway Sitges international chess festival took place Dec. 13-22 at Hotel Sunway Playa Golf and Spa, about 35 kilometers southwest of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. The tournament was a 10-round Swiss with a total prize fund of 27,155 euros.
Previous reports:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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