The playing hall
The 8th round of the Reykjavik Open is currently ongoing. Most top boards games have already finished and it is already known that there will be six leaders before tomorrow’s penultimate round.
Participants / Follow the games live
GM Ding Liren from China played with black against the current World Junior Champion Alexander Ipatov.
The Turkish young star played actively, moving his pawns forward to gain an important space advantage. The position was very tense and the mistake committed by Ipatov was decisive – his kingside light squares were very weak and the Chinese took the advantage.
GM Ivan Sokolov has not been showing his real strength. He lost today against Polish GM Martin Dziuba. The Dutch GM resigned on move 68, when his opponent was about to win a bishop endgame a pawn up.
The surprise of the round was the victory by IM Wei Yi against second seed GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. The French star probably was over-confident and went forward carelessly with 14…g5. The Chinese took advantage of his opponent’s adventurous ideas and got the win on move 33.
