Who Won Basel, Hastings And The Rilton Cup?

Three strong open tournaments have come to an end: the Basel Chess Festival, the Hastings Chess Congress and the Rilton Cup.

Here's a final report on all three.

Basel

Let's start with the shortest tournament of the three, and the one that wasn't covered here yet. The Basel Chess Festival was held January 1-5 at the Hilton Hotel in Basel. It followed the Zurich Open as Switzerland's second strong 7-rounder around the holidays.

As the top seed, GM Arkadij Naiditsch won in Zurich with 6.5/7. In Basel, he scored a point less and tied for first place with IM Alexander Donchenko (the winner in Groningen!), GM Eduardo Iturrizaga, IM Matthias Dann and GM Milos Pavlovic.

As it turned out, Naiditsch had the best tiebreak of all and so he won two opens back to back! The German GM had dropped below 2700 in the January rating list, but is now back to 2703 in the live list.

He started with 4.0/4, but so did Dutch talent IM Jorden van Foreest, who managed to draw his game with Naiditsch in round five. Well, "managed"? He was completely winning, but somehow he let his opponent escape:

That must have been extremely disappointing. Van Foreest lost his last two games. In round six, he went down in rather spectacular fashion:

The final round saw the following top pairings:

Dann IM (5) - Naiditsch,Arkadij GM (5)
Svane IM (4½) - Iturrizaga GM (5)
Rapport GM (4½) - Pavlovic,Milos GM (4½)
Van Foreest IM (4½) - Donchenko IM (4½)
Toth IM (4½) - Pelletier GM (4)

Both Dann and Svane played good games, and managed to hold their GM opponents to a draw. Both Donchenko and Pavlovic caught the three on 5.5 points, and Naiditsch had the best tiebreak.

Richard Rapport lost 5 rating points in Zurich and another 8.1 in Basel. He's still a very creative player, as the following game shows, but in this case his opening setup backfired:

Chess legend GM Vlastimil Hort scored a very decent 5.0/7, like last year. Another comparison with 2013-2014: back then GM Radek Wojtaszek was the top seed in Zurich and Basel, and like Naiditsch he won both events.

2015 Basel Chess Festival | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Rilton Cup

After six rounds, four players were tied for first place at the Rilton Cup: GM Michal Krasenkow, GM Nils Grandelius, GM Michael Roiz and GM Tiger Hillarp Persson.

It was the latter who grabbed sole lead in round seven, beating Krasenkow in a Petrosian King's Indian with an early h3.

Move 35 was a nice moment. White offered Black to take en passant, and Black replied by doing the same, while sacrificing a pawn:

GM Jon Ludvig Hammer won a nice game against Swedish GM Hans Tikkanen:

Afterward, Hammer went online to play through the moves of Krasenkow-Hillarp Persson and tweeted: “Rilton has best game prizes. I was feeling optimistic about my chances (...) until I saw Tiger's game. Class!”

Well, next it was Hammer to show class! Last year's winner won his second Rilton Cup in a row as he edged out on tiebreak...Hillarp Persson! Karma for that nice tweet?

The Norwegian won another Scandinavian derby against Nils Grandelius in round eight in what was a rather nice game as well. Hammer snatched a pawn on c5 which seemed risky to do. Later on he was happy to give back a3 when more important matters were happening on the board:

2014-15 Rilton Cup | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Hastings

The Hastings Chess Congress concluded one day later, on January 6. As reported, Chinese GM Zhao Jun had started with 6.0/6. Only one player was trailing by a point: GM Mark Hebden.

It was Hebden to whom Zhao dropped his first half-point, while top seed GM Maxim Rodshtein lost to another English GM: Keith Arkell, the European 50+ champion. Rodshtein blundered a pawn but the ending was perhaps objectively a draw:

GM Alexander Fier defeated GM Deep Sengupta in a game with a funny theme. As Stewart Reuben noted on the official website, you don't see a rook moving to a2 on move 10 so often — the same square where the same rook got incarcerated later on!

OK, so Zhao was halted by Hebden, but the next round he duly continued winning. He totally crushed GM Jahongir Vakhidov in a 3...Qd6 Scandinavian with a remarkable knight maneuver in the opening and then a nice combination:

Zhao Jun, in fantastic shape in Hastings. | Photo Lara Barnes.

The next day Fier also beat Hebden, and so the Brazilian GM was the only player on 6.5 points, a full point behind Zhao. The two drew their game in the final round, and so Zhao won the tournament with an undefeated 8.0/9.

2014-15 Hastings Chess Congress | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)