The 29th edition of the Abu Dhabi Masters is taking place on August 16-24 at the Radisson Blu Hotel & Resort. The 9-round Swiss open has Vladislav Artemiev, David Anton and Maxim Matlakov as the top seeds. After three rounds, none of the top-3 are in the leading pack. Five players are sharing first place with 3 out of 3: Vladimir Fedoseev, Xu Xiangyu, Alisher Suleymenov, Rathanvel V S and Abtin Atakhan.
Four games, four wins that was Praggnanandhaa’s tally at the start of Geza Hetenyi Memorial in Budapest. Pragg thus became the eighth Indian to break the 2700-elamark. However, the Indian speed train was stopped in the fifth round when he lost to Amin Tabatabaei. The prodigy returned to his winning ways the very next round, as he defeated Peter Prohazka with black on Sunday. | Photo: Zoltan Fülöp
On March 13, Russian Alexei Sarana became the European chess champion. Competitions were held in Serbia. In 11 rounds, the Russian chess player scored 8.5
The six strongest performers of the Airthings Masters Play-In will join Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So in Division I of the tournament’s knockout phase starting Monday. Meanwhile, 16 players will battle it out in Division II, and 32 will play in Division III. In Friday’s Play-In, Dommaraju Gukesh was the clear winner of the 9-round Swiss after impressively collecting 7½ points. The Indian prodigy then went on to get a 2-0 victory over former world champion Vladimir Kramnik.
Actually more players in the top 100: 13 US grandmasters vs 12 from Russia, down from 22 five years ago. But even the total is closing: In total Russia still has 246 grandmasters, compared to 101 from the US. Many Russian GMs from the older generation, like Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, have dropped out of the rating list, but the main reason for the decline is the reaction of players to Russia's war invasion of Ukraine. | Newsweek photo Getty