Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011
Hi everyone,
Sadler (l.) in July, winning in Haarlem again, shared with Van den Doel (r.)
The 13th Sants Open took place August 19-28 in the Auditorium of the Civic Centre in the Sants neighbourhood in south Barcelona, Spain. Sants used to be an industrial town on the plain bordering Barcelona, known as Santa Maria de Sants; nowadays it belongs to the district of Sants-Montjuïc.
The tournament was a 10-round Swiss with a record 659 participants. They were divided over two groups, the strongest being for players rated 2000 and higher. The top group had 29 GMs and 45 IMs fighting for a 2,500 Euro first prize. The FIDE rate of play was applied: 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move 1.
Sadler in action in Sants, Barcelona
You can read this very nice report in English at www.chessvibes.com plus the official website in Spanish at this link.
Hi everyone,
This is the big comeback news for 2011. Congratulations to former British Chess Champion and and Olympiad gold medalist Matthew Sadler for winning the 13th Sants Chess Open in Barcelona on Sunday with a score of 8.5/10.
This was his first long Swiss event in more than a decade!
The English grandmaster defeated top seed Jan Smeets in the final round to finish half a point ahead of Eduardo Iturrizaga, Aramis Alvarez Pedraza, Marc Narciso Dublan and Hector Delgado Ramos. Sadler also recently won his other classical chess tournament since 1999 - the Haarlem Weekender in July 2010. This year he had also won that jointly with Dutch GM Erik van den Doel.
Sadler (l.) in July, winning in Haarlem again, shared with Van den Doel (r.)
The 13th Sants Open took place August 19-28 in the Auditorium of the Civic Centre in the Sants neighbourhood in south Barcelona, Spain. Sants used to be an industrial town on the plain bordering Barcelona, known as Santa Maria de Sants; nowadays it belongs to the district of Sants-Montjuïc.
The tournament was a 10-round Swiss with a record 659 participants. They were divided over two groups, the strongest being for players rated 2000 and higher. The top group had 29 GMs and 45 IMs fighting for a 2,500 Euro first prize. The FIDE rate of play was applied: 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move 1.
Sadler in action in Sants, Barcelona
You can read this very nice report in English at www.chessvibes.com plus the official website in Spanish at this link.
From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
Also see her personal blog at
Chess is a funny thing on one side we talk of computers and kids and on the other we have guys like Gelfand and Sandler.
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