GM Anton Korobov (UKR, 2687) remains in the sole lead sitting on 7/8 with only three rounds left to be played at the European Individual Chess Championship 2023.

In Round 8, Korobov made a quick 8-move draw with GM Benjamin Gledura (HUN, 2637). Having black pieces against the leader, Gledura accepted the draw offer and kept his position in second place with a score of 6.5 points.

GM Alexey Sarana (FIDE, 2668) (pictured above) defeated GM Yuriy Kuzubov (UKR, 2668) to join Gledura in a tie for second place. Alexey got a clearly better position from the very beginning and, step by step, built up his advantage. The positional dominance eventually transposed into the material edge, and Alexey Sarana scored a critical victory to secure his position in the race for the medals.

As many as 27 players are sharing fourth place with 6/8 each, including GM Alexandr Predke (SRB, 2684) (pictured below), GM Andrey Esipenko (FIDE, 2680), GM Boris Gelfand (ISR, 2674), GM Kirill Shevchenko (ROU, 2668), GM Ivan Cheparinov (BUL, 2661), GM Etienne Bacrot (FRA, 2659), and others.

The 9th round starts today at 15:00 CEST, with GM Alexey Sarana taking on GM Anton Korobov with the white pieces.

Round 9 top 10 pairings:

Results & Complete pairings for the 9th round can be found here.

1. Sarana, Alexey (6½) – Korobov, Anton (7)
2. Gledura, Benjamin (6½) – Gelfand, Boris (6)
3. Predke, Alexandr (6) – Dardha, Daniel (6)
4. Esipenko, Andrey (6) – Bjerre, Jonas Buhl (6)
5. Bernadskiy, Vitaliy (6) – Shevchenko, Kirill (6)
6. Paravyan, David (6) – Cheparinov, Ivan (6)
7. Bacrot, Etienne (6) – Brkic, Ante (6)
8. Svane, Frederik (6) – Grandelius, Nils (6)
9. Ponomariov, Ruslan (6) – Dragnev, Valentin (6)
10. Guliyev, Namig (6) – Santos Latasa, Jaime (6)

Live broadcast with commentaries by IM Miodrag Perunovic can be followed through the ECU YouTube channel.

Text and photos: official website

Official website: eicc2023.com/