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8/9/2017 – Belgium's biggest open tournament took place in Charleroi from July 29th to August 5th, 2017. A total of 240 players gathered to play, enjoy and celebrate the game of chess. The top seed of the event Tigran Gharamian (2616) emerged as the winner on tiebreak edging out experienced GM Alexandre Dgebuadze. Read on for interesting positions plus a video interview with Tigran showing you some beautiful tactics from one of his games, and his work as a second of Levon Aronian. | Photos: Amruta Mokal

A strong open in a quiet locale

The Charleroi Open 2017 is not only the largest, but the strongest open tournament held in Belgium. Charleroi lies on banks of the river Sambre, about 50 kilometers south of Brussels. Although it sports a population of over 200,000, at times it has small town feel.

Above: Sometimes when you walk through the streets of the city, you feel as if there is no one else!

Below: A dream house for those who calm and quiet! | Photos: Amruta Mokal

The Charleroi airport is one of the most important ones in the country

The TIPC (Tourneoi International Pays de Charleroi) started with 44 players in its first edition 16 years ago. The tournament has grown in numbers ever since and in 2017 there were 240 players. There were three events: A (above 1900), B (1500 to 2000) and C (below 2000) that took place simultaneously.

The huge and well-lit tournament hall located in Complexe sportif de Roux | Photo: Amruta Mokal

The field in the A category was very interesting. One player was the favourite to win the title by quite some margin. He was the Armenian-French grandmaster Tigran Gharamian. Although Tigran currently has a rating of 2616, his level is much higher. His peak rating was 2676 in 2011 and he has an amazing wealth of knowledge thanks to working as Levon Aronian's second in the past. He intended to play the tournament with his Armenian friend Zaven Andriasian, but the latter couldn't make it as he had some visa issues to resolve. It meant that Tigran was staying alone at the event and it worked wonderfully well for him in terms of his result.

GM Tigran Gharamian, the top seed | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Experience vs. Youth

After Tigran we had four grandmasters who were extremely experienced and have beaten the best of players in the world during their younger days:

Clockwise from top left: Aloyzas Kveinys (Lithuania), Alexandre Dgebuadze (Belgium), Normund Miezis (Latvia), Ventizslav (Bulgaria) Inkiov | Photos: Amruta Mokal

A simple search on Mega Database shows that Kveinys has 2431 games, Miezes has 2754, Inkiov 2199 and Dgebuadze 1657. And these are just the recorded games. They must have played thousands of games which never made it to any databases. Now this is rich experience which makes each of the player a very dangerous opponent to face. But these experienced gentlemen were given a stiff challenge from three talented youngsters:

(L to R) Francois Godart (Belgium), James Eden (France) and Christophe Sochacki (France) | Photos: Amruta Mokal

Fracois Godart is one of the most talented Belgian players and is an extremely sharp calculator. James Eden became France's latest IM at the event by making his final IM norm and also surpassing the Elo barrier of 2400, while IM Christophe Sochacki already has two GM norms and a rating over 2450.

Sochacki is fearless and plays extremely sharp chess; just to show how uncompromising his play is — he participated in the blitz tournament, that was held after round six of the main event, and "pulled a Bobby Fischer" scoring a perfect 11/11, three points more than the second placed player!

It's not easy to say who really triumphed in the battle between youngsters and the experienced players. Just to give you an idea, I made this crosstable of only the games between Youth and Experience:

Youth prevails by a hair

The three youngsters scored five points against the experienced guys, while the older generation were able to snatch four points. However, it must be said that Alexandre Dgebuadze scored two extremely crucial wins, one in the penultimate and one in the last round against Godart and Sochacki repestively to finish as the joint winner with 7½/9.

The winner's games could have been smoother

Gharamian, at 33 years, straddles the middle. Perhaps that's the sweet spot: full of experience, but still full of energy. He scored 7½/9, tied with Dgebuadze, but won the tournament thanks to a better tie-break. (Incidentally, this was the first time in many years that I played a tournament which had the first tie-break as progressive score — also known as Cumulative.)