World Youth Championships in Caldas Novas, Brazil
The World Youth Championships took place November 18-26 in Caldas Novas, a hydrothermal tourist resort in central Brazil 230km south of the capital Brasilia. The event lacked some top quality – players such as Giri, Caruana and Nyzhnyk were absent, Hou Yifan also had other commitments - but certainly had quantity with a total of 1120 participants in 12 different sections.
According to a German chess blog (by a clubmate of one of the participants) the event was moved from Rio de Janeiro due to construction activities there for the 2014 football world championship and 2016 Olympic Games. Due to longer travelling times, the event was shortened from 11 to 9 rounds Swiss system ("as decided by FIDE shortly beforehand"). An official tournament homepage exists, but is rather useless at least for journalists.
Anyway, on to the chess with a brief account of the U18 and U16 Open and Girls tournaments: In the U18 Open Section, top seed Samvel Ter-Sahakyan (world #12 in his age category) cruised to victory, conceding just two draws – one in 73 moves against second seed and eventual silver medalist Fedoseev, one in the final round in 6 moves against Debashis who thereby secured bronze.
The U18 Girls group was, in hindsight, decided by top seed Kashlinskaya's blunder against Papp at most a few moves out of opening theory. Second seed Arabidze lost against Kashlinskaya but won all other games to claim gold.
Both U16 groups had a dramatic finish: all last-round games on the top three boards were decisive, including five wins with the black pieces, and decided the medal distributions. The game viewer includes a few games from these four sections.
All details and results can be found here.
