And here we go for the Serbia Chess Open 2022! This year a strong field of players is gathered! 267 players in the Masters tournament and 134 players in the Amateurs tournament, a total of 301 players of which nearly 250 are titled players.

The games of boards 1 to 52 of the Masters tournament are broadcasted on all online chess platforms (links at the end of the article).

And of course, with such a strong field, the first round was full of surprises. Most of the favourites of the Masters tournament had to face other titled players even though the tournament had just started. 

And it is at the board one that we have a first unexpected result since the number 1 seed Alexandr Predke (2688 Elo) has conceded the draw against the Serbian player Petar Spacic (2336 Elo). 

Predke-Spasic
Position after 54.Kb5

A performance that could have very quickly turned to defeat for Alexandr Predke since in the above position, Peter Spacic played 51...Ra1 with an equal position when he could have played 51.Rxa7! and after 52.Nxa7 Kg3!, White can no longer prevent the promotion of the h-pawn to queen. 

The other surprises of this first round are the following:

• FIDE Master Hristodoulou Panagiotis (2328 Elo) from Greece won against Polish grandmaster Piorun Kacper (2627 Elo) board 6.
• Grandmaster Anton Demchenko (2654 Elo) drew board 3 against Indian FIDE master Nikhil Dixit (2331 Elo).
• The Serbian grandmaster Indjic Aleksandar (2620 Elo) drew against the Indian international master Saravanan V. (2324 Elo) board 7. 

For the 2nd round, on the first boards, we will see encounters between grandmasters at ~2600 Elo and International Masters at around ~2400 Elo. We expect another round with some surprises! 

In the Amateurs tournament, the favourite of the tournament is the Bulgarian grandmaster Milko Popchev (2207 Elo) (the only grandmaster of the tournament) who logically won against the Hungarian player Karacsonyi Bank (1812 Elo). 

Just like in the Masters tournament, there were some surprises in this first round of the Amateurs tournament as the favourites did not perform well on tables 3, 6 and 7. 

Considering the first results of this first round and the many surprises, the tournament looks very exciting and open! 

Start of the 2nd round this Wednesday, June 29th at 4pm! 

You can follow the games live on all the major online chess platforms, here are the links below: 

https://live.chessbase.com/en/watch/2nd-Serbia-Open-Masters-2022/

https://live.followchess.com/#!serbia-open-masters-2022

https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/serbia-chess-open-2022-masters/1/1/1

https://www.chess.com/events/2022-serbia-chess-open

https://lichess.org/broadcast/serbian-open-2022-masters/round-1/Oh7R8Qaa

Julien Song