VLADIMIR AKOPIAN AND LILIT MKRTCHYAN OCCUPY 8TH PLACE AT EUROPEAN CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP

PanARMENIAN.Net
16.03.2010 14:10 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The European Individual Chess Championship among
women and men, bringing together 17 Armenian chess players in Rijeka
(Croatia), is underway.

On March 15 chess players completed the 9th round. Thanks to the
victory over Bojan Vuckovic (Serbia), Vladimir Akopian continues to
occupy the 8th place. He has had 7 points and is lagging behind the
new leader Ian Nepomnyashiy (Russia) by 0.5 points. Hrant Melkoumyan
lost to Artyom Timofeev (Russia) and dropped to 29th place.

In 9th round Lilith Galoyan met with Elina Danielyan and won. Now she
occupies 8th place with 6.5 points. Danielyan dropped to 36th place.

Victoria Smilayt (Lithuania) leads the table with 7.5 points.

The European Individual Chess Championship is a chess tournament
organized by the European Chess Union. It was established in
2000 and has since then taken place on a yearly basis. Apart from
determining the European Champion, another object of this tournament
is to determine a number of players who qualify for the FIDE world
championship. The tournament is held separately for men and women
as a Swiss system tournament, with a varying number of rounds. The
only exception was the first Women’s Championship tournament in 2000,
which was held as a knock-out-tournament. It should be noted that,
as with all chess competitions, the "men’s" section is in fact an
open tournament in which female players may participate, but not
vice versa. In 2002, Judit Polgarnarrowly missed the bronze medal
in the men’s competition by losing a play-off match against Zurab
Azmaiparashvili.

Apart from the first edition in 2000, where in case of a tie the
Buchholz-Rating was used as a tie-breaker, rapid-play play-off
matches were used to determine the medal winners as well as the world
championship qualifiers.