Levon Aronian emerged from the pack to win the Alekhine Memorial with an interesting win against long time leader Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Aronian won a lengthy game in a Gruenfeld where he continued to pose problems for his French opponent but also allowed him a couple of chances to escape. Detailed notes in the body of the article. Aronian caught Gelfand (he'd already drawn) with the win and the tie-breaks (number of games with black was level but Aronian had won one more game) favoured him.

Boris Gelfand allowed Viswanathan Anand to repeated the drawing line of the Semi-Slav he suffered to a draw with in Round 4 against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and after a little pressure for Gelfand a draw was eventually agreed.

Michael Adams needed a win against Vladimir Kramnik to also tie for first but he misplayed the middlegame and lost a pawn. However there were very reasonable drawing chances. Kramnik had a disappointing event and was clearly motivated to get back to 50% and Kramnik tried many, many ways to win before eventually breaking through for a win.

Peter Svidler hoped for a final round win against Laurent Fressinet to try and get out of the basement but had to force a draw in the end as he was worse.

Nikita Vitiugov and Liren Ding both played for a win in the final round against each other but in the end they had to settle for a draw.

Special prizes presented by Mark Taimanov: Game played in the style of Alekhine for Laurent Fressinet's win against Vladimir Kramnik.

Best combinations prize to Ding Liren for his round 1 win against Levon Aronian.

Best technical game prize for Boris Gelfand's win against Michael Adams.

Best result in St Petersburg: Nikita Vitiugov.

Official Final Standings (as given in the closing ceremony): 1st Aronian 5.5pts 2nd Gelfand 5.5pts, 3rd Anand 5pts, 4th Adams 4.5pts, 5th Vitiugov 4.5pts, 6th Fressinet 4.5pts, 7th Kramnik 4.5pts, 8th Vachier-Lagrave 4.5pts, 9th Liren Ding 3.5pts, 10th Svidler 3pts.

Alekhine Memorial 2013 (9)

Mark Crowther (Wed May 1 21:41:00 2013)