Canada Chess Open 2013: Nigel Shot Wins Title on Tiebreak over Eric Hansen

Alexandra Kosteniuk's Chess Blog for Daily Chess News and Trivia (c) 2013

Hi everyone,

The Canadian Chess Open 2013 took place 13-20th July at the National Hotel and Suites Ottawa in Ottawa, ON. The tournament saw a very intense fight for first place with strong players such as Nigel Short, Lazaro Bruzon and Ivan Sokolov aiming to get a big payout. These strong GMs were joined by young and ambitious Canadian players, such as GM Eric Hansen and IM Aman Hambleton.

Former world chess championship challenger Nigel Short showed his class and finished the event with six wins and three draws, but he had to wait for the organizers to calculate the tiebreak scores to get the winner’s title, as GM Eric Hansen achieved the same score. Both players received the same money prize, $4.000.

Five players shared 3rd-7th place after getting 7 points: Lazaro Bruzon, Ivan Sokolov, Aman Hambleton, Edward Porper and Arthur Calugar. Full standings below.

Nigel Short – Eric Hansen

Chessdom talked with Eric Hansen, who expressed satisfaction with his performance at this event:

The tournament took place in our capital, a quiet city. Because there were not many distractions, I was pretty focused on my tournament games. I managed to play solid and take advantage of my opponents’ mistakes for most of my victories. This is my last tournament in Canada before moving to Spain so It’s nice to leave on a good performance. Now, I will focus all my attention to preparation for the World Cup.

Aman Hambleton, who is a member of the Master Team that plays regularly at Chessdom Arena, was part of the organizing team, but this did not prevent him from getting a really good score at the tournament:

I was a part of the organizing team for the tournament, my job being the Elite Player Coordinator in charge of the foreign invitations, VISA’s, conditions, etc.
I thought the tournament was a great international look for Canada, with some near-2700 level participants (Nigel Short, Lazaro Bruzon, Ivan Sokolov).
Also, most of Canada’s young players (FMs, IMs) played the tournament so it was a nice chance for them to play with some different competition for a change :)
I found the tournament to have a nice schedule, very relaxing one game/day for the most part and it allowed time for most players to visit the many tourist sites in Ottawa, especially Parliament Hill. For me, it’s not an issue since I am living in Ottawa!
GM norms were possible, but unfortunately the GM’s in the tournament were not doing so well so even though I had 5.5/7 I only played an FM in round 8. I was close to making a GM norm, with performance near 2600 and 7/9 but I had only played 2 GM’s.
For a big Open of 200 participants, I think the Organization did a good job keeping the spectators up to date with pairings, as well as a very detailed Multimedia page with postmortem videos and pictures from the rounds.

Bruzon, Sokolov and Hambleton are among the players that traveled straight to Quebec to participate in the Quebec Open Chess Championship 2013. (www.chessdom.com)

Official website

Final Standings:
1 GM Nigel Short(title on TB) 2697 7.5
2 GM Eric Hansen 2587 7.5
3 GM Ivan Sokolov 2642 7.0
4 GM Lazaro Bruzon Batista 2758 7.0
5 IM Aman Hambleton 2580 7.0
6 IM Edward Porper 2494 7.0
7 IM Arthur Calugar 2418 7.0
8 GM Elshan Moradiabadi 2557 6.5
9 IM Artiom Samsonkin 2557 6.5
10 GM Bator Sambuev 2688 6.5
11 IM Raja Panjwani 2517 6.5
12 IM Richard Wang 2484 6.5
13 GM Ioan Cristian Chirila 2519 6.5
14 IM Rodney Oscar Perez Garcia 2464 6.5
15 FM Roman Sapozhnikov 2396 6.5
16 GM Luis Manuel Perez Rodriguez 2480 6.5
17 IM Keaton Kiewra 2423 6.5
18 GM Eduardas Rozentalis 2601 6.0
19 GM Eugene Perelshteyn 2571 6.0
20 IM Leonid Gerzhoy 2571 6.0
21 GM Reynaldo Vera 2514 6.0
22 FM Kevel Oliva Castaneda 2399 6.0
23 GM Walter Arencibia 2610 6.0
24 IM Bindi Cheng 2516 6.0
25 FM Michael Dougherty 2290 6.0
26 Michael Song 2390 6.0
27 Evgeny Miller 2234 6.0
28 FM Victor Plotkin 2394 6.0
29 Alex Yam 2367 6.0
30 Kevin Pacey 2223 6.0
31 Stijn De Kerpel 2157 6.0
32 Agastya Kalra 2130 6.0
33 FM Jason Cao 2239 5.5
34 FM Michael Kleinman 2367 5.5
35 FM Eric Rodriguez 2318 5.5
36 IM Leon Piasetski 2392 5.5
37 Digeng Du 2009 5.5
38 Geordie Derraugh 2297 5.5
39 Mike Ivanov 2252 5.5
40 James Fu 2257 5.5
41 Steve Demmery 2110 5.5
42 Jonathan Yu 2224 5.5
43 William G Doubleday 2166 5.5
44 Ramon J Cova 2077 5.5
45 Qiyu Zhou 2160 5.5
46 Dmitry Chernik 1918 5.5
47 James Chan 2184 5.5
48 Saeid Sadeghi 1978 5.5
49 Martial Larochelle 2232 5.5
50 Yevgeni Nahutin 2044 5.5
51 WC Alexandra Botez 2204 5.0
52 Armando Valdizon 2219 5.0
53 Miladin Djerkovic 2287 5.0
54 Mate Marinkovic 2231 5.0
55 Kevin Wan 2148 5.0
56 Tanraj S Sohal 2263 5.0
57 Jason Kenney 2159 5.0
58 Vasil Khachidze 2359 5.0
59 David Itkin 2151 5.0
60 Ruining Ray Wu 2117 5.0
61 Butch Villavieja 2275 5.0
62 Mark Plotkin 2223 5.0
63 Adam Dorrance 2185 5.0
64 Paul Leblanc 1839 5.0
65 Diwen Shi 2030 5.0
66 Ismail Ibrahim 2057 5.0
67 John Doknjas 2065 5.0
68 Zachary Burrows 2031 5.0
69 FM Robert Hamilton 2374 5.0
70 Amos Kuttner 1946 5.0
71 Max Gedajlovic 1875 5.0
72 Danail Donev 2023 5.0
73 Joey Zhong 2033 5.0
74 Jeremy Hui 1976 5.0
75 James Currie 1999 5.0
76 Mateusz Dydak 1975 5.0
77 Gordon Giacomin 1951 5.0
78 Adam Adriaanse 1924 5.0
79 David Cohen 1866 5.0
80 Jeff Babb 2211 4.5
81 David Petty 2161 4.5
82 Yuetong Davy Zhao 1873 4.5
83 CM David Gordon 2319 4.5
84 Francesco Dunne 2066 4.5
85 Daniel Van Heirzeele 2088 4.5
86 Chris Felix 1993 4.5
87 Stephan Tonakanian 2071 4.5
88 Wenlu Yu 2032 4.5
89 Mike Sun 2080 4.5
90 Vitaliy Matytsyn unr. 4.5
91 Vladimir Drkulec 1988 4.5
92 Nathan Farrant-Diaz 1748 4.5
93 Alex Y Lin 1809 4.5
94 David Forget 1921 4.5
95 Joshua Doknjas 1848 4.5
96 Benjamin Blium 1927 4.5
97 Guy Piche 1745 4.5
98 Brendon Lee 1870 4.5
99 Matthew Morabito 1799 4.5
100 Brian McKay 1860 4.0
101 Rod Hill 1959 4.0
102 Roger Lebrun 1914 4.0
103 Gilles Jobin 1942 4.0
104 Simon Kuttner 1877 4.0
105 Victor Itkin 1707 4.0
106 Gordon Ritchie 1730 4.0
107 Jeffrey Xu 1862 4.0
108 Lali Agbabishvili 2099 4.0
109 Patrick Scantland 1838 4.0
110 Michel Desjardins 1996 4.0
111 Robin Yu 1751 4.0
112 Jaime Solis 1658 4.0
113 Kai Richardson 1626 4.0
114 Wenyang Ming 1851 4.0
115 Michael Su 1770 4.0
116 Ryan Yang 1911 4.0
117 Rinna Yu 1301 4.0
118 Kajan Thanabalachandran 1759 4.0
119 Stanley Wu 1741 4.0
120 Luc Villeneuve 1931 4.0
121 Jill Ding 1585 4.0
122 Luc Gauthier 1740 4.0
123 Edward Selling 1579 4.0
124 Jean Bigras 1762 4.0
125 Doug Gillis 1618 4.0
126 Garland Best 1603 4.0
127 Ian Finlay 1936 3.5
128 David Kenney 1936 3.5
129 Mario Moran-Venegas 1880 3.5
130 Ashley Tapp 1481 3.5
131 Yinshi Li 2081 3.5
132 Mackenzie Hardie 1838 3.5
133 Lenard Grossmann 1614 3.5
134 Thomas Kurian 1640 3.5
135 Jacob Krolczyk 1909 3.5
136 Walter Macneil 1655 3.5
137 Robert Laszlo 1753 3.5
138 Melissa Lee 1534 3.5
139 Grant Schaper 1647 3.5
140 Kyle Creamer 1838 3.5
141 Marcel Laurin 1625 3.5
142 Robert J Armstrong 1590 3.5
143 Steven Faust 1711 3.5
144 Thomas Guo 1608 3.5
145 Alan Tomalty 1764 3.5
146 Clark Zhang 994 3.5
147 Rowan James 1072 3.5
148 Alex Reny 1067 3.5
149 Curtis Barlow Wilkes 1861 3.0
150 Norman Devine 1631 3.0
151 Alex Danilov 1767 3.0
152 Chris White 1757 3.0
153 Maurice Smith 1494 3.0
154 Fernando Echavarria Hidalgo 1679 3.0
155 John Remillard 1633 3.0
156 Kevin Low 1484 3.0
157 Francois Poitras 1687 3.0
158 Samuel Chen 1339 3.0
159 Richard Feng 1364 3.0
160 Aiden Zhou 1136 3.0
161 Konstantin Vlasenko 1660 2.5
162 Miles Duggal 1231 2.5
163 Brian Murray 1459 2.5
164 Conrad Macneil 1598 2.5
165 Ken Douglas unr. 2.5
166 Vilas Karmalkar 1604 2.5
167 Daniel Du 1038 2.5
168 W Thomson Bruce 1528 2.5
169 Annika Zhou 1045 2.5
170 Simon Perkins 1614 2.0
171 Frank Lee 1471 2.0
172 Neil Doknjas 1228 2.0
173 Dee Wu 1188 2.0
174 Jeff Zhang 1500 2.0
175 Ethan Low 1105 2.0
176 Jatinder Dhaliwal 1461 1.5
177 Keven Eyre 1536 1.5
178 Nicholas Short unr. 1.0


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