Games and tactics from Moscow

Aeroflot Open Moscow 2003 February 10 to 20, 2003 Official tournament page – Mirror Chess Express 64 (Russian)

The Aeroflot Open 2003 ended in a four-way tie for first place. Aleksej Aleksandrov, Alexei Fedorov, Peter Svidler and Viktor Bologan all scored 7 points in 9 rounds. The Moldavian Bologan finished first on tie-break and has thus qualified to play in the 2003 Dortmund Super-GM tournament.

Only a small number of games has become available. Although you can get most from the official web site, the format is quite unique. Instead of machine-readable ChessBase or PGN the organisers have provided scans of the original gamescores.

Unfortunately nobody has undertaken the task of providing an OCR application to read these documents. We hope that the organisers will at some stage provied the PGN files that they have announced. In the meantime here are a small number of games and ten tactical positions for you to solve.

• 97 games (zipped PGN) from the Aeroflot Open 2003
  (courtesy of The Week in Chess)
• Tactical puzzles from the Aeroflot Open

Final Standings (as published by WorldChessRating)

  1  Bologan, Viktor          MDA  2630  7.0
  2  Aleksandrov, Aleksej     BLR  2633  7.0
  3  Fedorov, Alexei          BLR  2579  7.0
  4  Svidler, Peter           RUS  2693  7.0
  5  Najer, Evgeniy           RUS  2585  6.5
  6  Galkin, Alexander        RUS  2568  6.5
  7  Rublevsky, Sergei        RUS  2644  6.5
  8  Sakaev, Konstantin       RUS  2645  6.5
  9  Dreev, Alexey            RUS  2690  6.5
 10  Smirnov, Pavel           RUS  2572  6.5
 11  Ulibin, Mikhail          RUS  2581  6.0
 12  Dolmatov, Sergey         RUS  2591  6.0
 13  Moiseenko, Alexander     UKR  2597  6.0
 14  Bu, Xiangzhi             CHN  2569  6.0
 15  Savchenko, Stanislav     UKR  2539  6.0
 16  Gagunashvili, Merab      GEO  2563  6.0
 17  Sutovsky, Emil           ISR  2651  6.0
 18  Kaidanov, Gregory S      USA  2629  6.0
 19  Lugovoi, Aleksei         RUS  2540  6.0
 20  Morozevich, Alexander    RUS  2678  6.0
 21  Popov, Valerij           RUS  2579  6.0
 22  Mamedyarov, Shakhriyaz   AZE  2596  6.0
 23  Kobalia, Mikhail         RUS  2635  6.0
 24  Shomoev, Anton           RUS  2541  6.0
 25  Tkachiev, Vladislav      FRA  2642  6.0
 26  Khenkin, Igor            GER  2624  6.0
 27  Granda Zuniga, Julio E   PER  2623  6.0
 28  Timoshenko, Georgy       UKR  2539  6.0
 29  Romanishin, Oleg M       UKR  2543  5.5
 30  Nataf, Igor-Alexandre    FRA  2545  5.5
 31  Sadvakasov, Darmen       KAZ  2523  5.5
 32  Lerner, Konstantin Z     UKR  2507  5.5
 33  Efimenko, Zahar          UKR  2590  5.5
 34  Kovchan, Alexander       UKR  2536  5.5
 35  Smirin, Ilia             ISR  2664  5.5
 36  Frolyanov, Dmitry        RUS  2447  5.5
 37  Van Wely, Loek           NED  2668  5.5
 38  Lautier, Joel            FRA  2670  5.5
 39  Malakhov, Vladimir       RUS  2677  5.5
 40  Jussupow, Artur          GER  2592  5.5
 41  Morovic Fernandez, Ivan  CHI  2541  5.5
 42  Ovetchkin, Roman         RUS  2554  5.5
 43  Sorokin, Maxim           ARG  2560  5.5
 44  Tregubov, Pavel V.       RUS  2612  5.5
 45  Al Sayed, Mohamad N.     QAT  2431  5.5
 46  Ionov, Sergey            RUS  2531  5.5
 47  Landa, Konstantin        RUS  2649  5.5
 48  Motylev, Alexander       RUS  2640  5.5
 49  Belov, Vladimir          RUS  2540  5.5
 50  Milov, Vadim             SUI  2592  5.5
 51  Izoria, Zviad            GEO  2565  5.5
 52  Adianto, Utut            INA  2562  5.5
 53  Yurtaev, Leonid          KGZ  2547  5.5
 54  Burmakin, Vladimir       RUS  2575  5.5
 55  Inarkiev, Ernesto        RUS  2566  5.5
 56  Shaposhnikov, Evgeny     RUS  2543  5.0
 57  Goloshchapov, Alexander  UKR  2523  5.0
 58  Bocharov, Dmitry         RUS  2524  5.0
 59  Deviatkin, Andrei        RUS  2487  5.0
 60  Fressinet, Laurent       FRA  2593  5.0
 61  Halkias, Stelios         GRE  2521  5.0
 62  Zvjaginsev, Vadim        RUS  2671  5.0
 63  Jobava, Baadur           GEO  2559  5.0
 64  Kempinski, Robert        POL  2545  5.0
 65  Lastin, Alexander        RUS  2636  5.0
 66  Degraeve, Jean-Marc      FRA  2542  5.0
 67  Bartel, Mateusz          POL  2447  5.0
 68  Grischuk, Alexander      RUS  2712  5.0
 69  Anastasian, Ashot        ARM  2555  5.0
 70  Chuchelov, Vladimir      BEL  2592  5.0
 71  Aronian, Levon           ARM  2610  5.0
 72  Kazhgaleyev, Murtas      KAZ  2604  5.0
 73  Yemelin, Vasily          RUS  2549  5.0
 74  Kotsur, Pavel            KAZ  2586  5.0
 75  Alekseev, Evgeny         RUS  2614  5.0
 76  Vaganian, Rafael A       ARM  2667  5.0
 77  Amonatov, Farrukh        TJK  2551  5.0
 78  Shariyazdanov, Andrey    RUS  2576  5.0
 79  Yakovich, Yuri           RUS  2579  5.0
 80  Sulskis, Sarunas         LTU  2567  5.0
 81  Eljanov, Pavel           UKR  2571  5.0
 82  Chernyshov, Konstantin   RUS  2561  5.0
 Total 201 players