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| Reports by Rod McShane (also at:
http://icechess.com/Hrokur2003/reports.php):
Round 1 February 18, 2003 The new Mayor of Reykjavik, Thorolfur Arnason, opened the Stormot Hroksins Category XV tournament in Reykjavik yesterday. Addressing a packed playing room at the Reykjavik Art Museum he encouraged everybody present and absent to financially support the Hrokurinn Club, organisers of the strongest tournament in Iceland for well over ten years. Earlier Lilja Gretarsdottir welcomed the visiting players commenting on the appropriateness of the setting for the tournament and hoping that this would help players to produce some of the best examples of their art over the next ten days. Among the participants in the opening ceremony were 50 students from the newly established Hrokurinn Chess School (motto: “chess is fun”), which hopes to revitalise children´s chess in Iceland. With four out of five games drawn on the first day, Icelander Helgi Ass Gretarsson found himself the lone leader overnight. The first game to finish in the opening round was the Sicilian Najdorf of Hannes Stefansson-Alexei Shirov. The Latvian star repeated his game against Kasparov (Sarajevo, 2000), when Kasparov was Black. Said Shirov, “The problem today was that I could not remember how to continue. When I played e5 I thought White was better.” The reigning Iceland national champion Stefansson fresh from his bruising six game match against Sergei Movsesian last week confided that he didn´t know the Kasparov game. “I had the option to exchange queens or play a very sharp variation. I swapped queens, then Alexei plays the best move and it´s drawn.” The French Tarrasch of Luke McShane-Viktor Korchnoi paired the youngest (19) and oldest player (71) in the tournament. In a complex middelgame the young Englander gained an advantage against the former World Championship Challenger due to Black´s weak pawns, but Korchnoi with accurate play was able to liquidate into a drawn rook ending. In Ivan Sokolov-Bartlomiej Macieja, according to Macieja, always known as Bartek, "Ivan played a line in the Nimzo Indian which he had analysed already, which I didn´t know. I played 11...f5 which seemed a natural move to me. To Sokolov it was a novelty and he thought for over an hour before he sacrificed a piece. Later he grew short of time and two pieces down he gave up a further rook for the draw." It´s always difficult to start as the bottom seed in such a strong event, so IM Stefan Kristjansson, the only non-grandmaster in the tournament, would have been disappointed not to get off the mark in this game against fellow Icelander Helgi Ass Grtarssson gained an opening advantage due to his centralised pieces and won in 32 moves. Finally, Etienne Bacrot-Michael Adams was a strategical, manoeuvring Nimzo Indian which began as an earlier game between the pair from the Sarajevo SuperGM tournament of 2000. Adams appeared to acquire a small advantage before the draw was agreed after 45 moves. |
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| All material © Mark Crowther |
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