Politiken Cup - The final word

It is over. Politiken Cup is finally over, and what I feel right now is tremendous tiredness.
First of all, it is nice to mention those who won the tournament.
Ivan Cheparinov from Bulgaria had a slightly better middle Bucholz than Ivan Sokolov from Netherlands (actually from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but he changed his federation), and Jonny Hector from Sweden.
While Cheparinov and Hector drew their games in last round, Sokolov like he always do, played very hard to the end.

Sokolov made +4 in Elo and with his rating from 1. August (2696) he climbed for second time in his career to 2700! Really impressive.
Cheparinov, Sokolov and Hector scored 8 out of 10 points.
There are 15 players in group with 7,5 points, and I finished in the big group with 7 out of 10.
It sounds really good, but actually this is not so clear.
Everyone who played Politiken Cup sometime knows that one can meet players with a really low Elo which means that number of "real" rounds is reduced to 5-6 (in other open tournaments, without accelerated pairing, number of serious rounds is reduced to 6-7).
It would be interesting if organizers think about idea of playing Politiken Cup A and Politiken Cup B.
However, my result is quite satisfactory. I made very slight plus in Elo which means that I stabilized my form in 2012. This was my second best performance in 2012 if I look just to numbers, but I think that I played better in Marienbad and Jahorina.
I had some goals with Politiken Cup and some sub-goals.
My goals (and sub-goals) were:

• Go up in rating
• Play against at least two GMs which will be good training session before GM tournament in Gothenburg
• Adopt some new variations in my opening repertoire
• Improve my physical condition before Manhem GM tournament in Gothenburg
• Score good with black pieces, which was a bit problematic during 2012

I can say that I managed to accomplish everything on this list but my plus in rating is just 1,4 points and I played against exactly two Grandmasters.

I scored 4 out of 5 in my black games, but I have to admit that I scored 4 out of 4 against lower rated opponents and my only black game against higher rated opponent was defeat for me (although I had good position after the opening).

I did not lose any games with white pieces, but I won only one and played three draws with lower rated opponents.

It means that there is always room for improvement.

So what actually happened from my last rapport?

I played against Norwegian junior rated around 2250 and I had some initiative and some outside chance to win the game when I won a pawn, but than I played 39. Rc4 and he managed to exchange rooks which leads to dead drawn endgame.

In order to save energy for today´s round I immediately offered him a draw.

Today, I played against Swedish amateur player, who was nice and drove me from Helsingör port to the playing venue.

We played really interesting game in which I played extremely stupid in the opening and just because of his slow play I managed to play for advantage.

He was rated E2115 so in one complicated position which we had the playing strength was clearly on my side and I won the game.

I have to admit that it is much easier to prepare for black games and I did not have enough time for serious preparation and I felt in my White games that I was improvising.

Otherwise, it was very pleasant to play Politiken Cup, and see so many friends and blog readers who were also playing. Some of them had more success and some were unlucky (or not in good form).

The good results for their ratings made Sandi Stojanovski ( As I already informed you, he won against Lajos Portish), and Anders Johansson (in his first tournament after last year edition of Politiken Cup).

You can play trough my games from round 9 and 10 and I will share some of my analysis in one of my next posts.