The European Champions: Pia Cramling and Ian Nepomniachtchi
Wednesday, 17 March 2010 23:08
www.FIDE.com
Ian Nepomniachtchi from Russia and Pia Cramling from Sweden are the new European Chess Champions. In the last, 11th round, the 20-year old Russian Grandmaster defeated Vladimir Akopjan from Armenia to complete his excellent score of 7 wins and 4 draws, earning 9 points and over 25 rating points.
It was just a confirmation of his total dominance at the Center Zamet and yet another title in his splendid career, beginning with the first gold as a 10 year-old and followed by many medals from the World and European Championships.
Second place is shared by Baadur Jobava (GEO) and Timofeev Artyom (RUS) so tomorrow they will play for the bronze and silver medal. Seven players with 8 points are directly qualified for the World Cup: Lysyj, Efimenko, Almasi, Tomashevski, Rodshtein, Pashikian and Salgado Lopez. The remaining 13 players will be determined by the playoffs in which there will be 28 players who finished the Championship with 7.5 points.
Today’s round at the women’s tournament was very interesting, namely, the new European Champion, Swedish Pia Cramling, inflicted the first defeat to Victoria Cmilyte (LTU), and so that was enough for winning the title in Rijeka. This is the second title of Europan Champion for Pia, who recorded 8 wins with 2 draws and 1 defeat at this Championship. She managed to collect 9 points and to improve her rating for 19 points.
Viktorija Cmilyte won the silver with 8,5 points, while the owner of the bronze is still unknown thus there are five players with 8 points: Monika Socko, Marie Sebag, Tatiana Kosintseva, Natalia Zhukova and Yelena Dembo. All these players qualified for the World Cup, and seven other travelers will be known after the playoffs at which 10 players with 7,5 points will participate.
For tomorrow, March 18th, the tie-breaks for the medals and the placement at the World Cup are scheduled. The two qualifying rounds will start at 10am and 1pm, while the final matches will start at 4.30pm.
Clutch performance by Cramling.
A typo, it is not Maire Sebag, but Marie Sebag who shares 3rd with some others.
I’ve always thought the marketing of Kosteniuk as a sex kitten is silly, ever since I first became aware of it when reviewing a book of hers. Heck, they startedit when she was just in her early teens, with such Lolita-like shots as this:
http://www.anusha.com/kosteniuk9.jpg
but in others she just looks ridiculous:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/55/113634907_85e90f5fdc.jpg
Stick to chess, Sasha.
Comment by Taylor Kingston