Liepaja chess festival 2017
The 24th festival took place on the first weekend of August. It consisted as usual the Open, the Blitz, the team tournament and the so called Super tournament. This year the summer was not very kind and the tennis tournament was cancelled. The Open had 130 participants, but the tournament was not as strong as last year. Similar faces were fighting for the prizes and for the four spots in the Super tournament.
Vladislav Kovalev from Belorussia won the event. He played very confident chess and continued to show the solid play also later in the Super tournament. Other qualifies had some luck, some more some less. Players who did not qualify to the Super tournament could play in the team competition. After two days of the Open tournament the blitz tournament started on Saturday morning followed by the Super tournament and the team competition. The blitz tournament had 13 rounds and Latvian German grandmaster Daniel Fridman was the lucky winner. The blitz started at 11 am and was followed immediately with the Super tournament.
Yours truly won the blitz last year, but this year I got out from bed on the wrong side. I lost two endgames with just two extra pawns and this did not help my mood. Playing two tournaments in one day was kind of bad decision, at least I realized that I may lose all my games in the evening. This did not happen, but my game did not improve much.
The organizers shifted the playing hall back to the old location, but as usual during the chess tournaments only spectators were the players themselves. The playing venue was divided, the Super tournament participants had some more prestigious place on the stage. First day the live transmission did not work for some reason. Later it appeared that the person who was responsible for that took too long Friday out and was not able to work. The festival in general had very friendly atmosphere as usual. Main organizer was the local man and also president of Latvian Chess Federation Aris Ozolins. The festival was reborn 24 years ago thanks to him. The festival took place first time long time ago during the Soviet times.
The Super tournament had four invitees and four qualifiers from the Open. Total only eight players and seven rounds were not so much for rapid format tournament. In the first day Artur Neiksans lost four games, but he came back strong on next day winning the last three. I drew my first two games and then I got tricked in pawn endgame.
Kovalenko as expected was one the favorites and showed interesting games. Daniel Fridman won first three games, but then suddenly lost in completely winning position against Latvian Meskovs, but still shared first place after first day with Kovalenko who also lost to Meskovs with three points.
Next day I helped Fridman in the following game.
Before last round Kovalenko was ahead of Fridman and had white pieces. In last moment already clearly winning position some drama happened and eventually Fridman was the winner.
Next year is the 25th festival and the organizers hope to gather record number of players. See you then.
Jaan Ehlvest
