Congratulations to GM Abhijeet Gupta for winning London Chess Classic Open Tournament 2011

Chess Blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011

Hello everyone,

Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta has won the London Chess Classic 2011 open section with a fine win over GM Keith Arkell of England while Indian International Master Sahaj Grover got the second position after after the final round of the event that concluded on Sunday. Abhijeet, a former world junior champion and reigning Indian national champion, scored eight points in all and will be past the coveted 2650 ELO rating mark in the next rating list, while Sahaj continued his progress for his Grandmaster title.

"I came here last year and had mediocre results, but off late I have been playing better and this win here will probably help me a lot for tough future events like Gibraltar and Aeroflot open," said Abhijeet after a nerve-wracking final game against Arkell. "I had much better position out of the opening and he used too much time to complicate matters, it was a pretty crazy game but somehow, I was able to pull through," said the former under-10 world champion and the reigning World Junior bronze medallist, said Sahaj Grover.

There was Indian dominance in the junior section as all the prizes were shared by them. Mohammad Ashraf, PV Nandhidhaa and under-12 world champion Murali Karthikeyan shared the honours in the junior category. You can access the official website of the London Chess Classic for more details.

Here are the top standings:

Rank	Name	Score	Fed.	Rating
1	GM Gupta, Abhijeet	8.0	IND	2640
2	IM Grover, Sahaj	7.5	IND	2515
3	GM Jones, Gawain C B	7.0	ENG	2635
4	GM Hillarp Persson, Tiger	7.0	SWE	2530
5	IM Das, Arghyadip	7.0	IND	2470
6	GM Summerscale, A P	7.0	ENG	2422
7	IM D`Costa, Lorin A R	7.0	ENG	2409
8	GM Cornette, Matthieu	6.5	FRA	2548
9	GM Wells, Peter K	6.5	ENG	2492
10	IM Smith, Axel	6.5	SWE	2480
11	IM Hunt, Adam C	6.5	ENG	2458
12	IM Pert, Richard G	6.5	ENG	2455
13	GM Arkell, Keith C	6.5	ENG	2418
14	IM Houska, Jovanka	6.5	ENG	2415
15	IM Slavin, Alexei	6.5	RUS	2400
16	IM Bates, Richard A	6.5	ENG	2386
17	IM Mikkelsen, Nikolaj	6.5	DEN	2381
18	FM Weber, Tom	6.5	LUX	2355
19	Stoma, Pawel	6.5	POL	2316
20	GM Tikkanen, Hans	6.0	SWE	2586
21	GM Pert, Nicholas	6.0	ENG	2563
22	GM Hebden, Mark L	6.0	ENG	2515
23	IM Roy Chowdhury, Saptarshi	6.0	IND	2411
24	IM Thorfinnsson, Bjorn	6.0	ISL	2402
25	IM Rendle, Thomas E	6.0	ENG	2389
26	IM Buckley, Graeme N	6.0	ENG	2383
27	IM Ferguson, Mark	6.0	ENG	2374
28	IM Getz, Nicolai	6.0	NOR	2369
29	IM Crouch, Colin S	6.0	ENG	2366
30	Gislason, Gudmundur	6.0	ISL	2318
31	FM Alfred, Nathan S W	6.0	ENG	2294
32	CM Coleman, David J	6.0	ENG	2244
33	FM Smith, Andrew Philip	6.0	IRL	2167
34	Tozer, Philip A A	6.0	ENG	2159

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