Vladislav Artemiev’s fantastic year continued as the 21-year-old Russian added the European title to victory in Gibraltar and double gold at the World Team Championship. In the final round he held a tricky position against Maxim Rodshtein, who would have taken gold with a win but had to settle for 4th place. Sweden’s Nils Grandelius matched Artemiev’s 8.5/11 but took silver on the tiebreak of having lower-rated opponents, while Poland’s Kacper Piorun won bronze. The top 26 players are all qualified for the World Cup later this year.

He scored his fifth win in five with the white pieces by beating 17-year-old compatriot Andrey Esipenko in the penultimate round. With White it looks as though, like a certain Magnus Carlsen, he’s happy merely to “get a game”, but when Ivan Sokolov suggested that to him Artemiev pointed out that he was actually well-prepared in his offbeat systems… something else that applied to the young Magnus (of course by now Magnus is well-prepared everywhere).

So that’s all for the 2019 European Individual Championship! For those interested in the World Cup, the 128-player knockout that will take place in Khanty-Mansiysk from 9th September to 2nd October this year, you can find a good regularly updated qualification list here.

See also:

• Official website
• All the games with computer analysis here on chess24
• European Championship 1-5: Four leaders
• European Championship 6-9: Artemiev overtakes Kramnik

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