Monday 21 December 2015

Izzat wins Australasian Masters

IM Kanan Izzat waited until the final round before overtaking IM Max Illingworth to win the 2015 Australasian Masters. Benefitting from the slightly easier run home, Izzat defeated FM Luke Li in Round 8 to secure a GM norm, before finishing with a quick last round draw with IM James Morris. Illingworth drew his round 8 game against Vasily Papin to reach 7/8, but a final round loss to top seed Arturs Neiksans allowed Izzat to win the tournament with 7.5. Neiksans finished in3rd place on 6.5, with Morris in 4th on 5.5.
In the IM event, IM Igor Bjelobrk destroyed the field, scoring 8.5/9, finishing 3 points ahead of FM Chris Wallis and FM Eugene Schon who tied for 2nd on 5.5.
Full results and tournament bulletins can be found at the tournament website.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you read Russian, there is an interview with Sandler (organizer), Papin, and Neykshans.
http://chess-news.ru/node/20655

James said...

Doesn't this also secure Illingworth's GM title? AFAIK he now has 3 GM norms (the previous two being from First Saturday September GM events in 2011 and 2014. He all ready has the requisite 2500 rating.

Anonymous said...

Papin now has a Youtube photo album from his 2015 tours. The last 3 slideshows are Aussie.

http://rostovchess.ru/news/1237/