Zhao Jun On 6.0/6 In Hastings
Will he do a Caruana? Chinese GM Zhao Jun won his first six games at the Hastings Masters.
Next week the 77th Tata Steel Chess Tournament starts — the second longest running chess tournament in the world. The oldest is the Hastings Chess Congress.
The first edition, which was held in the summer of 1895, was famously won by Harry Nelson Pillsbury ahead of all the top players: Steinitz, Lasker, Chigorin, Tarrasch, Schlechter, Blackburne, Janowski, and others.
The first Christmas Congress was held in 1920-1921. It was a four-player double round-robin of British Champions, won by Frederick Yates.
Every World Champion before Garry Kasparov except Bobby Fischer played at Hastings. The great days are over, but the tradition is still there and many GMs find their way to the small English coast town each year.
This year there are 14 GMs playing in the top group, called Hastings Masters. Three of them are over 2600.
The top seeds are Maxim Rodshtein (2676) of Israel, Romain Edouard (2659) of France, Aleksander Mista (2614) of Poland and Alexandr Fier (2592) of Brazil.
Because the tournament uses accelarated pairings during the first three rounds, the grandmasters needed to work for their points from the start. Nonetheless, there were no surprises on the first twenty boards in round 1.
A very tough battle was the following:
In the second round top seed Rodshtein dropped half a point against Glenn Flear, but Edouard did get to 2.0/2. On board three, however, Mista went down against the 15-year-old Hungarian IM Benjamin Gledura:
The upset of the day was John Anderson (2180) beating GM Danny Gormally:
In round 3, played on the last day of 2014, Edouard was held to a draw by the young Uzbek player Jahongir Vakhidov. A great fight, worth replaying:
Rodshtein suffered a crushing loss on New Year's Day. His 5...Qe7 already looks a bit funny, and after making too many pawn moves he just got crushed.
Deep Sengupta and Zhao Jun played a great game on top board in round 5. The win in this coffee-house fight went to Zhao, 28 years old and China's 12th player:
By then Zhao was in sole first place, and he cemented his lead with another win on Saturday against Edouard — his sixth straight win!
Three more rounds to go. Who will stop the Chinese GM?
2014 Hastings Masters | Round 6 Standings
| Rk. | SNo | Title | Name | FED | Rtg | TB1 |
| 1 | 6 | GM | Zhao Jun | CHN | 2585 | 6 |
| 2 | 10 | GM | Hebden Mark L | ENG | 2523 | 5 |
| 3 | 2 | GM | Edouard Romain | FRA | 2659 | 4,5 |
| 4 | 3 | GM | Mista Aleksander | POL | 2614 | 4.5 |
| 5 | 4 | GM | Fier Alexandr | BRA | 2592 | 4.5 |
| 6 | 5 | GM | Bogner Sebastian | SUI | 2586 | 4.5 |
| 7 | 7 | GM | Lagarde Maxime | FRA | 2576 | 4.5 |
| 8 | 13 | GM | Arkell Keith C | ENG | 2489 | 4.5 |
| 9 | 15 | IM | Kjartansson Gudmundur | ISL | 2451 | 4.5 |
| 10 | 16 | IM | Gledura Benjamin | HUN | 2450 | 4.5 |
| 11 | 30 | WIM | Olsarova Tereza | CZE | 2302 | 4.5 |
| 12 | 1 | GM | Rodshtein Maxim | ISR | 2676 | 4.5 |
| 13 | 8 | GM | Sengupta Deep | IND | 2566 | 4.5 |
| 14 | 11 | GM | Vakhidov Jahongir | UZB | 2502 | 4.5 |
| 15 | 17 | IM | Hunt Adam C | ENG | 2437 | 4.5 |
| 16 | 18 | IM | Galyas Miklos | HUN | 2428 | 4 |
| 17 | 9 | GM | Hawkins Jonathan | ENG | 2552 | 4 |
| 18 | 25 | FM | Wallner Joachim | AUT | 2340 | 4 |
| 19 | 12 | GM | Gormally Daniel W | ENG | 2499 | 4 |
| 20 | 23 | IM | Bates Richard A | ENG | 2349 | 4 |
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
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