Since July 12th the beautiful Martuni, on the shores of Lake Sevan, Armenia, has been the setting for an extraordinary closed tournament featuring some of the world's top juniors. After four rounds the leaders on three points are Poland's Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Spain's David Antón. They face a showdown in Round 5, while half a point behind are Vladislav Artemiev, Samuel Ter Sahakyan and Vidit Gujrathi.

It's been obvious since the very first round that the organisers, led by Armenian Chess Academy President GM Smbat Lputian, have done a great job in selecting the players. The participants are young, combative and perfectly prepared to provide first-rate chess. Only five of the 20 games so far have ended in draws, and the players are demonstrating the best facets of their styles.

Jan-Krzysztof Duda has been showing fine calculation, and thanks to concrete play he's managed to win complicated endings against Sevian and Vidit and also turn the tables in positions as tough as the following against Hovhannisyan.





We're in the run-up to the time control on move 40 and the Armenian player, with White, has a powerful knight on d6 and also a pawn as compensation for the exchange. White's last move also attacks f6 and it seems as though the black king is in trouble. Duda, however, finds a great counterattack: 36...Rde7! with the idea of meeting 37.Qxf6 with Qh5! followed by Re1 and mate on the back rank. That precise idea allowed him to retain his material advantage and ultimately convert a long ending in 116 moves!

David Antón, meanwhile, showed his courage and nerves of steel right from the start, scoring an attacking win against Petrosian and coming out on top in a tense encounter with Salem, where in serious mutual time trouble David showed his ingenuity and fine calculating skills:





David, with White, is an exchange up in return for a pawn. However, the position is far from clear. With only seconds on his clock, David spotted a weakness in Black's back rank and set a cunning trap. 37.Bf6! attacking the black rook, and after 37...Rd7 38.Be5 Salem failed to see the subtle difference between having the rook on e7 or d7. After 38...Nxe5 he was surprised by the powerful zwischenzug 39.Rc8+! which is now possible since the e6-bishop isn't controlling the c8-square. After 39...Bb8 40.Qxe5 the game had been decided in favour of the Spanish player. A magnificent example of how to try and exploit the tactical themes of a position.

David's long defence to draw with Artemiev was also highly impressive, since Vladislav's filigre technique was in evidence in the game against Antón as well as in his magnificent victory over Ter-Sahakhyan, where he converted what for most would have been a symbolic advantage into a full point.

Ter-Sahakyan is, so far, the only Armenian player to be flying the flag high, since he's half a point behind the leaders, while his three compatriots occupy the bottom three places. The chasing pack is completed by India's Vidit, who was leading until he suffered a tough defeat against Duda.

Name FED Rating Pts. Tiebreak 1 GM Duda Jan Krzysztof 2632 3.0 5.50 2 GM Anton Guijarro David 2626 3.0 4.25 3 GM Artemiev Vladislav 2660 2.5 5.50 4 GM Ter-Sahakyan Samvel 2593 2.5 4.75 5 GM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi 2643 2.5 4.25 6 GM Sevian Samuel 2578 1.5 2.75 7 GM Salem A.R. Saleh 2615 1.5 2.25 8 GM Hovhannisyan Robert 2611 1.5 1.50 9 GM Gabuzyan Hovhannes 2589 1.0 2.25 10 GM Petrosyan Tigran L. 2630 1.0 1.50

The 9-round tournament has no rest days, so you can follow the action each day from 13:00 CEST. Simply use the selector below to choose a round or game to watch (note you can now hover over a player's name to see their results so far):

You can also watch all the games in our free mobile apps:

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