Havana, Cuba. – Grand Master Leinier Dominguez, from Havana Province, played last Thursday against Italian Fabio Caruana in the beginning of a string of 4 games with chess players that have an ELO coefficient lower than the Cuban.
The opposite happened at the beginning of the very hard Corus 2009 tournament, played in Wijk Ann Zee, The Netherlands. The Idol of Güines had to contend with chess players of the stature of Sergei Karjaking, Peter Leko, Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanatan Anand. They all have higher ELO coefficients and are better placed in the world ranking, but he achieved a draw in each game.
With this result, the player from Havana Province has 2 points out of 4 and he is sharing the places from 5th to 8th in the tournament.
I had a conversation with Pedro Norat, Leinier´s former professor and coach, and Danilo Buela, an expert from Radio Rebelde Station. I found out that with this result, the Cuban player has added a few points to his personal ELO. Both agree that the performance of the player from Güines can be regarded as excellent.
After the match with Caruana, scheduled for last Thursday, the best chess player in America will play against Tiviankov with white pieces today. Next Saturday, he will have black pieces against Smeets and on Sunday his rival will be Van Wely. The next four opponents look weaker than the representative of the largest Caribbean Island.
Translated by: Pedro
A. Fanego
( 03.12.2009 10:13 AM ) |
