Ukrainian GM Anton Korobov (UKR, 2658) once again took the sole lead in the European Individual Chess Championship 2023 after defeating IM Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis (GRE, 2520) in Round 7.
The Greek IM sacrificed a piece in a very sharp and complicated game, but Korobov found a way to defend and consolidate the position. Kourkoulos-Arditis had his chances for a draw, but he did not manage to find the only moves that would have kept him in the game. With today’s victory, Anton Korobov scored 6.5/7 and is now a half-point ahead of GM Benjamin Gledura (HUN, 2637), the only player from the large group of players with 5 points to score the victory.
Gledura is now in clear second place with 6 points after winning a drawish endgame GM Giga Quparadze (GEO, 2483).
Playing with Black, Quparadze solved all the opening problems but completely mishandled the endgame. Gledura used his passed b-pawn to reach the won queen ending and scored a full point.
Heading into Round 8, 13 players tie for the third place scoring 5.5 points each: IM Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis (GRE, 2520), GM Ruslan Ponomariov (UKR, 2655), GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen (CZE, 2651), GM Frederik Svane (GER, 2577), GM Etienne Bacrot (FRA, 2659), GM Jaime Santos Latasa (ESP, 2655), GM Alexey Sarana (FIDE, 2668), GM Alexandr Predke (SRB, 2684), GM Nijat Abasov (AZE, 2625), GM Vitaliy Bernadskiy (UKR, 2611), GM Boris Gelfand (ISR, 2674), GM Yuriy Kuzubov (UKR, 2616) and GM Kirill Shevchenko (ROU, 2668).
Round 8 starts tomorrow at 15:00 CEST and the top 10 pairings are:
1. Korobov, Anton (6½) – Gledura, Benjamin (6)
2. Santos Latasa, Jaime (5½) – Predke, Alexandr (5½)
3. Gelfand, Boris (5½) – Nguyen Thai Dai Van (5½)
4. Sarana, Alexey (5½) – Kuzubov, Yuriy (5½)
5. Shevchenko, Kirill (5½) – Abasov, Nijat (5½)
6. Kourkoulos-Arditis, Stamatis (5½) – Bacrot, Etienne (5½)
7. Ponomariov, Ruslan (5½) – Svane, Frederik (5½)
8. Sargissian, Gabriel (5) – Bernadskiy, Vitaliy (5½)
9. Kadric, Denis (5) – Martirosyan,Haik (5)
10. Lagarde, Maxime (5) – Navara, David (5)
Live broadcast of the games can be followed with commentaries by IM Miodrag Perunovic on the ECU YouTube channel.
Text and photos: official website
Official website: eicc2023.com/
