Matthew Herman, rated 2149, won the “Edoardo Crespi” International tournament in Milano ahead of many GMs and IMs! He earned his first IM norm and barely missed out on his GM norm. Heiko Mertens from Germany also earned an IM norm (his second).
Here are the top finishers:
| 1 | — | Herman Matthew J | 2149 |  |
6.5 | +4 | –22 | +54 | +16 | +9 | +13 | =2 | =8 | =3 |
| 2 | GM | Solodovnichenko Yuri | 2563 | |
6.5 | +38 | +24 | +22 | =12 | +7 | +8 | =1 | =3 | -4 |
| 3 | GM | Tratar Marko | 2492 | |
6.5 | +25 | =17 | +18 | =21 | +14 | =6 | +10 | =2 | =1 |
| 4 | GM | David Alberto | 2587 | |
6.5 | –1 | +46 | +49 | +26 | –13 | +32 | +6 | =10 | +2 |
| 5 | GM | Salvador Roland | 2527 | |
6.5 | +64 | =14 | +23 | =6 | =22 | =7 | =21 | +24 | +12 |
| 6 | IM | Bellia Fabrizio | 2399 | |
6.0 | +47 | +10 | +30 | =5 | =12 | =3 | -4 | +23 | =9 |
| 7 | IM | Colovic Aleksandar | 2457 | |
6.0 | +49 | +16 | =9 | +58 | –2 | =5 | +28 | =12 | =8 |
| 8 | GM | Marin Mihail | 2562 | |
6.0 | +37 | =28 | =34 | +20 | +11 | -2 | +15 | =1 | =7 |
| 9 | IM | Saric Sinisa | 2452 | |
6.0 | +35 | +40 | =7 | =14 | -1 | =23 | +17 | +22 | =6 |
| 10 | — | Mertens Heiko | 2320 | |
6.0 | +42 | –6 | +25 | +52 | +21 | +12 | -3 | =4 | =13 |
| 11 | IM | Tesic Dragan | 2403 | |
6.0 | +29 | –30 | +48 | +31 | -8 | +33 | -12 | +40 | +21 |
Full standings here. Special thanks to Adolivio for providing us with the updates.
Details, standing, games: www.scacchisticamilanese.it
Next week Herman will play a round robin in Ascona (Switzerland).
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Who’s this guy?
I happen to know Matt from the time when we both were playing and winning in Banker Athletic League NY for Goldman Sachs chess team back in 2006.
Susan may recall a simul that she gave back then to GS team, I believe she had a blog entry for that simul.
Matt (Mathew) is a great player and a good team member. My understanding is that he always been under rated as he was/is overall very gifted but simply was not able to allocate a lot of time to chess. Now it seems like he did a lot of work and it paid out.
Very happy for Matt and will be rooting for him in this Ascona tournament.
M. Koganov