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London Chess Classic 2024: Highlights

Tournament
Annual Event

London Chess Classic - is an annual event which consists of various chess tournaments, strong invitational grandmaster tournament, 2000+ rating Open and other.
Invitational tournament this year had a field of eight grandmasters including two 2700+ players Vidit and Mamedyarov. Tournament was won by current English Champion Gawain Jones who scored 5/7 unbeaten with 2795 perfomance. Before you check highlights you can try solving puzzles out of games

https://lichess.org/study/FiQ8s8qb


Gawain Jones

Jones started his tournament with a win against Michael Adams where he successfully constructed a mating net over black king using 2 rooks and a knight.

https://lichess.org/study/O9V515xj/ojBQbdZW#74
In the second round he defeated Shreyas Royal in King's Indian Defence, and won Ju Wenjun in the last round forcing better endgame for white with 22.Nb6! and 23.Bd5.
https://lichess.org/study/Ix3aXMBF/EyYZarQb#42
Overall Gawain had one of the greatest tournaments in his career as he stated in a commentator room with Lawrence Trent

Michael Adams

While he started the tournament with a loss against Jones, he managed to go on +1 winning against Shreyas and Mamedyarov. Latter one is truly a demonstration of his fighting spirit.

https://lichess.org/study/Qm8Ix0AE/CVxYZlGs#61

Nikita Vitiugov

He scored 4/7 losing to Andrew Hong and winning Ju Wenjun and Royal Shreyas, in the latter one he won by constructing a thematic knight+rook checkmate construction, but he used king in the attack!

https://lichess.org/study/Qm8Ix0AE/fNNGDq18#80

Vidit Santosh Gujrathi

Vidit also scored 4/7 by winning against Andrew Hong where he managed to change the course of the game with interesting tactics. Maneuvre Qe2-Qe5-Nd7-Rxe5 simplified position in his favor. He also drew all other games

https://lichess.org/study/tiUayXhm/JdwTmRn7#46

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov

He scored 4/7 winning against Ju Wenjun and Royal Shreyas and losing to Michael Adams. In his game against Jones you can see an interesting way to counter Catalan

https://lichess.org/study/Qzg6BEkq/fgy9PHqn

Andrew Hong

American grandmaster scored fair 50% by losing to Vidit and winning against Vitiugov where game got decided by a precise pawn break

https://lichess.org/study/EZZRIeZp/1mOjVmQF#110

Ju Wenjun

Current Women's Champion scored 2,5/7, having good winning game against Shreyas where she demonstrated white attacking possibilities in 3.e5 3...c5 variation of the Caro-Kann (Shreyas didn't played opening part accurately too though)

https://lichess.org/study/mdy37osO/qZO96638#6

Royal Shreyas

Youngest participant got 1/7, making draws with Hong and Vidit and losing other games. His game against Vidit had quite interesting aggressive London play in the opening and white king finding safe place on f4 in the end

https://lichess.org/study/Qzg6BEkq/WjhHMxrQ


Official Website for the event