Murzin Dominates For 1st Freestyle Friday

GM Volodar Murzin won Freestyle Friday on May 29 with a wire-to-wire win in which he lost no games, taking the tournament outright on a 10/11 score for his first victory ever in the event. All of the top four spots were won without tiebreaks, in fact, with GM Nodirbek Yakubboev scoring 9.5/11, GM Pranesh M nine points, and NM Ethan Sheehan the only player ending on 8.5 points. Tiebreaks did determine the women’s prize winner, WIM Melika Mohammadi by one spot over last week’s claimant FM Rose Atwell.

Four players began the event with a perfect 4/4, among them Murzin and Pranesh, with the others being last week’s winner GM Haik Martirosyan as well as GM Conrad Holt. Murzin and Martirosyan persisted on to 5/5, the latter despite missing an absurd exchange sacrifice against Pranesh.

Murzin was not interested in letting Martirosyan win this tournament for a second straight week, and the computer analyzed the game as over after just six moves: 6.Qa4 lost contact with the undefended g1-knight and allowed the skewer 6…Rf1. Murzin won both pieces for the rook, and eventually gave up his queen but had a rook and two knights for it. With more than enough material, Murzin gave White’s queen nothing to attack the rest of the game and moved to an easy 6/6.

Not only that, but Murzin ended up already a full point ahead after the only player to enter the sixth round on 4.5/5, GM Leon Luke Mendonca, lost to Yakubboev. In the ensuing round, Yakubboev would become the player to finally hold Murzin to his first draw, after Murzin’s big chance to head toward 7/7 was hidden behind complications.

Pranesh, Martirosyan, and FM Artin Ashraf took the opportunity to close to within a half-point of Murzin, but the narrowing of the standings was short-lived for two of them. Pranesh did win in the eighth round after GM Francesco Sonis committed early seppuku, but Martirosyan (who then faded the rest of the event) lost to Yakubboev, and Ashraf could not stop Murzin from reboarding the winning train.

When play resumed out of the scheduled break, Murzin’s next challenge was playing the black pieces against GM Oleksandr Bortnyk, who looked lost after 40 moves. Then he appeared to be saving a draw with his a-pawn until he promoted it too quickly and got forked. A few moves later, he got forked… again. And the game was over.

Pranesh and Yakubboev kept their pace, but time was running out, especially when Murzin won yet again in the 10th round, defeating IM Sahib Singh. Yakubboev stayed barely alive with a win over Sonis, but Pranesh was upset and eliminated from first-place contention by Sheehan.

In the last round, Sheehan got White against Murzin, but Murzin drew without any drama to secure the first-place bag. Yakubboev, playing White against GM Samvel Ter-Sahakyan, went from one pawn down to two pawns up and soon won an exchange as well to take second place.

Pranesh, who had begun the round with hopes of no better than that second-place finish, got into a desperate position against Bortnyk but turned things around to save third place.

For Murzin, like for Martirosyan last week, the victory was his first placement in the Freestyle Friday Championship, which GM Pranav Venkatesh and Bortnyk continue to top well ahead of anyone else despite just missing points this week. GM Anna Muzychuk remains a clear first in the women’s standings, followed by Atwell.

May 29 Freestyle Friday | Final Standings (Top 25)

(Full final standings.)