Banyoles Chess Festival

The last Festival of Banyoles in Spain was played from 15th until 24th August 2007.

The georgian IGM Levan Aroshidze (2470) had won the main tournament A with 7/9. He tied with IGM Moskalenko Viktor, IM Gonzalez Renier (who made his last IGM norm on this tournament), IGM Gonzalez Garcia Jose and IGM Gonzalez Garcia Jose.

The tournament was on the city of Banyoles, not far from airport of Girona and about 100km from Barcelona or 50km from France. Banyoles is a beautiful city, known for its large lake, the biggest of Catalogne and one of the biggest of Iberique Peninsule. The Olympic games were held here on 1992 and the world championship of aviron in 2004.

The presence of IGM Nigel Short was prestigious for the tournament. But because of his back problems, he had to withdraw from this tournament after the 5th round.

In the firsts round, speeches were made by IGMs Short, Moskalenko, Marin and Gonzalez Garcia. The 2 hour speech from Short was very interesting. He spoke of his experiences in chess with a lot of humour and anecdotes. From his beginning when he was child to his match against Kasparov. In the end, he had to stop the speech because it was past 11.30 PM… (You can see 3 videos of this on my site http://www.echecs-photos.be/).

The first day of the festival was played an Acrive Chess tournament. IGM Moskalenko and Short were the winners of this.

Dimitri Allaert (2013), a young player from Belgium (18y old), was the revelation of this tournament. With is so low rating, he made a performance of 2350 elo and he was not far to make an IM norm. He had bad luck against IM Yury Lapshun because his position on this game was certainly draw. Dimitri won the rating prize for the players unless of 2150 elo.

The tournament of Banyoles is in a big circuit of tournament in Catalogne from May to Oktober. The next tournament is the Open of Sants in Barcelona. The first round of this tournament was on the afternoon of the last day of Banyoles and after the prizes ceremony, a lot of players were gone to Barcelona (http://www.escacs.cat/circuit/circuit.html)

Special thanks to Fabrice Wantiez for this special report (http://www.echecs-photos.be/Banyoles2007/index.html)