The Games Page: Chess
By Jon Speelman
The Independent – United Kingdom
May 16, 2005
The annual Armenian Championship took place from 29 April to 12 May
in the capital, Yerevan. Chess is hugely popular in Armenia and,
despite it having only about 10 million nationals worldwide, it’s
currently ranked third in the world behind Russia and the Ukraine
according to the average rating of the top 10 rated players.
The best players often avoid competing in their own national
championships, but even in the absence of their top four the 12-player
tournament averaged a very respectable 2,521 (category 11), with
eight grandmasters, two IMs and two young untitled players.
The top seed was the World No 75, Gabriel Sargissian, and there was one
more player over 2,600 ” Karen Asrian ” while six of the 12 were in
the 2,500s. In a very fiercely fought tournament, exactly two-thirds
of the games ” 44 out of 66 ” ended decisively, and the result was
only determined by the final round, at the start of which Sargissian
and Asrian led jointly on 7/10, ahead of Ashot Anastasian on 7.
Anastasian had Black against one of the untitled players, Beniamin
Galstian, so it wasn’t a big surprise that he won. But both of the
leaders contrived to lose ” Sargissian in a violent battle with the
IM Tigran Kotanjian, below, and Asrian as Black against the bottom
seed Levon Babujian after a long, hard battle.
So Anastasian was first by himself on 7.5/11 ahead of Sargissian and
Asrian on 7 and three players, including Babujian, who was 19 last
Sunday and presumably gained a truckload of rating points from the
tournament, on 6.
In this splendidly bloody battle, Kotanjian got a positional advantage
and bravely played 26.b4 rather than 26.gxf4 Rf5. Sargissian threw
everything at him in time trouble, but he held firm and emerged a
whole rook up.
Tigran Kotanjian vs Gabriel Sargissian
Yerevan 2005 (round 11)
Nimzo-Indian 4.Qc2