Oleksandr Bortnyk Wins 13th Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix
GM Oleksandr Bortnyk won the 13th Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix. The Ukrainian grandmaster beat GM Maxim Matlakov of Russia 2-1 in the knockout final, deciding the last game in a mating attack. GM Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran is the new leader in the overall Grand Prix standings.
The next Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix will be played on September 1 at 10 a.m. Pacific / 19:00 Central Europe.
The 13th Speed Chess Grand Prix tournament was held on Tuesday, August 25, with 728 participants. It was Vietnamese grandmaster Le Quang Liem who won the Swiss part, having the best tiebreak among eight players scoring 8.5/10.
The live broadcast of the tournament.
Like last week, the biggest names who were playing failed to make it to the knockout phase. They include GM Hikaru Nakamura, who just missed as he finished in shared ninth place, as well as GMs Sergey Karjakin and Peter Svidler.
It shows that, besides online blitz being a special skill, there's also some randomness to such tournaments and players need to have a (very) good day—and a bit of luck. At the same time, the overall GP standings as given below bring forward the players who continuously finish high in the rankings. Maghsoodloo (@Parhamov), the new leader, is clearly one of them.
Nakamura just missed out on the knockout as he ended with three draws, after starting with 6.5/7. His last win, against GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov (@Chesswarrior7197), is an instructive one, especially the moment he took on g3 with his f-pawn:
Speaking of Abdusattorov, his round-six win against GM Andrew Tang (@penguingm1) is quite interesting, if only for the one moment when Tang could have forced a checkmate himself. A tactic perfect for Puzzle Rush.
The players who qualified for the knockout were the ones who made it to 8.5 points: besides the aforementioned GMs Bortnyk and Le Quang Liem, they were GMs Jeffery Xiong, Anton Korobov, Pavel Ponkratov, Maxim Matlakov, Aleksandar Indjic, and IM Le Tuan Minh.
August 25 Speed Chess Grand Prix | Swiss Final Standings (Top 20)
| Rk | Fed | Title | Username | Name | Score | SB |
| 1 | GM | @LiemLe | Le Quang Liem | 8.5 | 56.5 | |
| 2 | GM | @jefferyx | Jeffery Xiong | 8.5 | 54 | |
| 3 | GM | @GOGIEFF | Anton Korobov | 8.5 | 51.75 | |
| 4 | GM | @Oleksandr_Bortnyk | Oleksandr Bortnyk | 8.5 | 51.25 | |
| 5 | IM | @wonderfultime | Tuan Minh Le | 8.5 | 49.75 | |
| 6 | GM | @Infernal_XaM | Pavel Ponkratov | 8.5 | 48.25 | |
| 6 | GM | @Borsch7 | Maxim Matlakov | 8.5 | 48.25 | |
| 8 | GM | @Beca95 | Aleksandar Indjic | 8.5 | 46 | |
| 9 | GM | @erichansen | Eric Hansen | 8 | 58 | |
| 10 | GM | @Hikaru | Hikaru Nakamura | 8 | 50.25 | |
| 10 | GM | @Alexander_Zubov | Alexander Zubov | 8 | 50.25 | |
| 12 | IM | @Anonymous1762 | Arjun Kalyan | 8 | 49.5 | |
| 13 | IM | @swimmerchess | Siva Mahadevan | 8 | 44.25 | |
| 14 | IM | @Bulldog167 | Leon Livaic | 8 | 43.75 | |
| 15 | GM | @Izoria123 | Zviad Izoria | 8 | 42.75 | |
| 16 | IM | @AlexTriapishko | Alexandr Triapishko | 8 | 41 | |
| 17 | GM | @Anton_Demchenko | Anton Demchenko | 8 | 40 | |
| 18 | GM | @BocharovD | Dmitriy Bocharov | 8 | 39.5 | |
| 19 | GM | @GMKrikor | Krikor Sevag Mekhitarian | 8 | 38.5 | |
| 20 | GM | @Parhamov | Parham Maghsoodloo | 7.5 | 50.5 |
Bortnyk first eliminated IM Le Tuan Minh (@wonderfultime) and then Indjic (@Beca95) before facing Matlakov (@Borsch7) in the final. The Russian GM had beaten Xiong (@jefferyx) and Le Quang Liem (@LiemLe).
After the players both scored a win, Bortnyk took the first prize with a nice finish:
Bortnyk won the $1,000 first prize and 12 GP points while Matlakov took second ($500 and eight GP points). Indjic and Ponkratov both won $200 and four GP points, while the losing quarterfinalists each earned $100 and two GP points.
IM Anastasia Bodnaruk (@Vesper2018) won the $100 prize for being the top-scoring female player.
Below are the current Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix standings. At the end of the season, the players with the four best scores will advance to the Speed Chess Championship to be hosted later this year.
Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix | Standings After August 25 (Top 20)
| # | Title | Fed | Name | Username | Swiss Points |
Bonus Points |
Overall Points |
| 1 | GM | Parham Maghsoodloo | @Parhamov | 67 | 22 | 89 | |
| 2 | GM | Haik Martirosyan | @Micki-taryan | 59.5 | 28 | 87.5 | |
| 3 | GM | Hikaru Nakamura | @Hikaru | 59 | 28 | 87 | |
| 4 | GM | Vladislav Artemiev | @Sibelephant | 42.5 | 36 | 78.5 | |
| 5 | GM | Vladislav Kovalev | @vladislavkovalev | 66 | 8 | 74 | |
| 6 | GM | Dmitry Andreikin | @2Vladimirovich90 | 57 | 14 | 71 | |
| 7 | GM | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | @LyonBeast | 41.5 | 28 | 69.5 | |
| 8 | GM | Grigoriy Oparin | @OparinGrigoriy | 42.5 | 20 | 62.5 | |
| 9 | GM | Maksim Chigaev | @Fandorine | 48.5 | 12 | 60.5 | |
| 10 | GM | Sergey Karjakin | @SergeyKarjakin | 49.5 | 10 | 59.5 | |
| 11 | GM | Alireza Firouzja | @Firouzja2003 | 48 | 10 | 58 | |
| 12 | GM | Alexander Grischuk | @Grischuk | 49.5 | 6 | 55.5 | |
| 13 | GM | Nordibek Abdusattorov | @ChessWarrior7197 | 42 | 10 | 52 | |
| 14 | GM | Raunak Sadhwani | @RaunakSadhwani2005 | 47.5 | 4 | 51.5 | |
| 15 | IM | Tuan Minh Le | @wonderfultime | 42 | 6 | 48 | |
| 16 | GM | Aleksandar Indjic | @Beca95 | 41.5 | 6 | 47.5 | |
| 17 | GM | Vladimir Fedoseev | @Bigfish1995 | 33 | 14 | 47 | |
| 18 | GM | Boris Grachev | @Guenplen | 39 | 8 | 47 | |
| 19 | GM | Peter Svidler | @PSvidler | 33.5 | 12 | 45.5 | |
| 20 | GM | Oleksandr Bortnyk | @Oleksandr_Bortnyk | 33 | 12 | 45 |
Games final eight
The Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix is presented by Gambit, where you can play classic games like Reversi, Backgammon, and Oh Ship with players from around the world.
More information about the Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix can be found here.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
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