The Week in Chess

1. Vlastimil Hort 1944-2025 -

   The Czech GM Vlastimil Hort has passed away at the age of 81. Born in Kladno on January 12th 1944 he died in Germany May 12th 2025.

   Hort grew up in the Czechoslovakia becoming a Grandmaster in 1965. He played the 1967 Sousse Interzonal finishing tied 6th, not enough to advance to the Candidates. He then played Board 4 in the USSR vs the Rest of the World match in 1970. Hort did eventually reach the Candidates in 1977 where he met Boris Spassky. This was also the peak of his career when Hort was world number 6 and rated 2620. Spassky was ill during the match and Hort gave up one of his rest days to aid his recovery after Spassky ran out of his. Hort lost the match narrowly in the end. Hort defected from the Czech Republic in 1985 moving to West Germany where he won the national championships 3 times (to add to his 5 earlier Czech titles). I first saw him on the BBC TV program the Master Game in the early 1980s, he was a memorable character and went on to be a chess commentator for many years in Germany. Hort played regularly up until 2020 and his final published game was in the Czech League in 2022.

   Hort's Wikipedia entry

   Hort Obituary by Peter Doggers

2. 58th Capablanca Memorial 2025 - Games and Results

   58th Capablanca Memorial takes place Fri 9th to Mon 19th May 2025. The elite section is a 10 round double round robin with five instead of the normal six players. Players: Volodar Murzin, Jonas Buhl, Bjerre, Evgeny Romanov, Arseniy Nesterov and Carlos Daniel Albornoz Cabrera. There is an open alongside.

3. IV Sunway Formentera Open 2025 - Games and Results

   The IV Sunway Formentera Open took place 29th April to 9th May 2025. Valentin Dragnev won with 8.5/10 a point clear of Artem Omelja and Sergey Fedorchuk.

4. Chess this Weekend 9th to 11th May 2025 - 10

   The GCT Superbet Chess Classic Romania is the main event, already this is shaping up nicely with Fabiano Caruana and Praggnanandhaa starting with two draws and a win each. Three players, Firouzja, So and MVL have started with a win, a loss and a draw. The rest day is on Monday. The event starts at 1pm UK time but there's a half hour delay in all the broadcasts.

   The final FIDE Women's Grand Prix in Grosslobming, Austria Tue 6th May to Fri 16th May 2025. This is the final event in the Grand Prix with two Candidates places at stake and there are some complicated scenarios. It still looks likely that Goryachkina has enough to qualify (her GP is over), Anna Muzychuk and Tan Zhongyi probably need to win the event and Jiner Zhu needs a high placing, not necessarily first. Muzychuk has started with 3.5/4 including a beating one of her main rivals Jiner Zhu. Zhu started with 0/2 but got back to 2/4 today. Tan Zhongyi started with 2/2, but then lost two and is now on 2/4.

   The Asian Individual Championships take place Wed 7th to Thu 15th May 2025. Leading players: Nihal Sarin, Tabatabaei, Yakubboev, Karthikeyan and Vokhidov. Bardiya Daneshvar started with 3/3 with a huge number of players on 2.5.

   The Polish Championships continue this weekend and take place 5th to 15th May. Pawel Teclaf leads early on with 3/4.

   58th Capablanca Memorial has its opening ceremony on Friday night before starting on Saturday. The elite section: Volodar Murzin, Jonas Buhl, Bjerre, Evgeny Romanov, Arseniy Nesterov and Carlos Daniel Albornoz Cabrera.

   The Hungarian Team Championships have their final three rounds Friday to Sunday. Pentala Harikrishna, Benjamin Gledura, Pavel Eljanov, Sanan Sjugirov and Baadur Jobava play. The league seems to have been decided with Friday's Round 7 when Tuxera ANSK beat closest rivals ASE Paks 6-4 in a close match decided when Tuxera won on boards 3 and 4, the remaining games were drawn. This put Tuxera three points clear with only two rounds to go.

   The Dutch League finishes on Saturday, there may be some big names.

   The French Top 12 for Women has five rounds this weekend, The top four will play off later for the titles.

   The Sunway Formentera Open finished on Friday 9th. Valentin Dragnev won the event with 8.5/10 a point clear of Artem Omelja and Sergey A. Fedorchuk.

5. Asian Individual Championships 2025 - Games and Results

   The Asian Individual Championships take place in Al Ain UAE, Wed 7th to Thu 15th May 2025. Open and women's events.

   Players: Sarin Nihal, Amin Tabatabaei M., Nodirbek Yakubboev, Murali Karthikeyan, Shamsiddin Vokhidov, Son Nguyen Ngoc Truong, Saleh Salem A.R., Pouya Idani, Luke Mendonca Leon, Abhimanyu Puranik, Xiangyu Xu, Bardiya Daneshvar, V Pranav, Jingyao Tin, L Narayanan S, David Paravyan, Abhijeet Gupta, M Pranesh, Pa Iniyan, Jinshi Bai, Shekhar Ganguly Surya, Venkataraman Karthik, Ivan Zemlyanskii etc

   Leading players in the women's event: Leya Garifullina, Valentina Gunina, Olga Girya, Yuxin Song, Nguyen Pham Le Thao, Warda Aulia Medina,

6. GCT Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2025 - Games and Results

   The Grand Chess Tour Superbet Chess Classic Romania takes place in Bucharest 7th to 16th May 2025. Players: D Gukesh, Fabiano Caruana, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, R Praggnanandhaa, Alireza Firouzja, Wesley So, Levon Aronian, Krzysztof Duda Jan, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Daniel Deac Bogdan. There is a 30 minute delay for the live games.

7. Russian Team Championships 2025 - Games and Results

   The Russian Team Championships took place in Sochi Sat 26th Apr to Mon 5th May 2025. Premier: Grischuk, Artemev, Morozevich, Malakhov, Sjugirov, etc. Higher League: Esipenko, Makarian, Rychagov etc. Women: Garifullina, Gunina, Girya etc. With the current situation this is nowhere near as strong as in the past. SK KPRF from Moscow with Grischuk and Artemiev won the title. The team names in the results and for the players might look a bit weird. All the documentation was in Cyrillic and that leaves me two choices, google translate, which is generally good but occasionally very weird, or the direct one for one substitution of the Cyrillic letters for Western ones, again not without problems, but the solution I went with.

8. FIDE Women's Grand Prix in Grosslobming 2025 - Games and Results

   FIDE Women's Grand Prix takes place in Grosslobming, Austria Tue 6th May to Fri 16th May 2025. Players: Jiner Zhu, Zhongyi Tan, Anna Muzychuk, Nana Dzagnidze, Mariya Muzychuk, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Rameshbabu Vaishali, Lela Javakhishvili, Olga Badelka and Nurgyul Salimova.

   The event is the final in a series of 6. The top two in the final standings will qualify for the Candidates. The leaders are Aleksandra Goryachkina followed by Humpy Koneru, neither play in this final event. Goryachkina seems certain to take one of these places and indeed almost certainly win the series, Humpy Koneru will likely not finish second. Zhu Jiner won't need a very big result to overtake her and Anna Muzychuk & Tan Zhongyi are also still in the race.