Yahli Sokolovsky claims maiden Israeli Championship title at 19

Sokolovsky outright winner with 7½/9

The 2026 Israeli Chess Championship took place from 19 to 27 January in Acre, at the city’s Culture Hall. The nine-round Swiss tournament brought together 103 players from across the country, representing a broad geographical spread from Ma’alot in the north to Be’er Sheva in the south.

The field included 11 GMs, 10 IMs and 12 FMs. Of the 15 Israeli players rated above 2500 on the January FIDE list, 9 competed, while the most notable absentee was Isreali legend Boris Gelfand. The total prize fund stood at NIS 90,000 (just under USD 30,000).

Acre, known in Hebrew as Akko and in Arabic as Akka, lies on the coastal plain of Israel’s Northern District. The city occupies a strategic position on a natural harbour at the edge of Haifa Bay along the Levantine Mediterranean coast. Historically, it served both as a centre of maritime trade and as a key junction on the coastal route and the road leading inland through the Jezreel Valley.

Aerial view of Acre via Wikimedia Commons

The top seeds were GMs Ilia Smirin, Ido Gorshtein, Evgeny Postny, Yahli Sokolovsky and Victor Mikhalevski. The tournament was won outright by 19-year-old Sokolovsky, who scored 7½/9 and achieved a Tournament Performance Rating of 2694. The player from Kiryat Ono gained 19.2 rating points and rose from tenth to fourth place in the national ranking.

Sokolovsky opened the event with four consecutive victories and stayed among the co-leaders through the middle rounds. A key moment came in round eight, when he defeated second seed Gorshtein with the white pieces to move into sole first place (see the full game with annotations below). A draw with black in the final round proved sufficient to secure the title, marking his first triumph in a national championship. Among his earlier notable results are shared second place finishes at the 2024 Rilton Cup and the 2024 Dortmund Festival A-Open.

Three players finished half a point behind on 7/9. On tiebreaks, second place went to IM Yeshaayahu Tzidkiya, followed by GM Evgeny Alekseev in third and FM Ezra Paul Chambers (from Burundi) in fourth.

The playing hall | Photo: Mark Livshitz

Sokolovsky 1-0 Gorhstein

In this video course, Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explores the fascinating world of Dutch and Grünfelkd structures with colours reversed.
In this video course, Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explores one of the most intriguing and under-examined areas of modern chess: reversed opening systems, focusing on the Reversed Grünfeld and the Reversed Dutch. At first glance, these two systems seem unrelated. However, they share a common strategic challenge: the value of tempi, structure, and psychology when familiar openings are played with colours reversed. Drawing on his long professional experience, Sokolov explains why these positions are far more subtle than they appear and why traditional engine evaluations often fail to capture their true complexity.
Free sample video: Introduction
Free sample video: Larsen’s b4 Plan vs Reversed Stonewall Setups: Larsen – Spassky

Yahli Sokolovsky | Photo: Mark Livshitz

Final standings

…103 players

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