Keres memorial rapid tournament 2013

Keres traditional memorial rapid tournament was held in Tallinn from 11^th till 13^th of January.

This year there were 10 players in the main tournament. Big surprise was two ladies among the participants. Both Latvian women grandmasters qualified from preliminary tournament.  This year total of 112 players participated which was a new record. Five players qualified to the final. Veteran player Evgeni Sveshnikov won with easy. Full results of the preliminary tournament are here.  http://chess-results.com/tnr89441.aspx?lan=1 The final was very strong and probably too strong for the ladies. Still Dana Rieznice won one game and her unfortunate victim was former World Champion Alexander Khalifman. Ilse Berzhina had some good positions but could not finalize them. Dana was not happy with her last round game against Danile Fridman when she lost control over the clock and lost on time in the winning position. Overall winner was again Alexei Shirov. Full results here  http://chess-results.com/tnr89707.aspx?lan=1 I was lucky to have best tie break and was second. My game against Shirov was very complicated and despite the fact that according to the computer I had winning advantage the game was finally drawn. At the very end Shirov missed winning move order, but probably we both were satisfied with the final result. I won both games against ladies and beat Nikita Maiorov in the last round and suddenly found myself on second place. Good start for the year 2013.

Jaan Ehlvest