Carlsen and Svidler qualify for final in Gjøvik

Chess Festival in Gjøvik, Norway
The Aker Chess Challenge is being played in the main auditorium of Gjøvik cinema, under the same roof as Thon Hotel, where Simen Agdestein in 1991 played a 2-2 drawn match with classic time controls against the long reigning world champion Anatolij Karpov.

The event consists of a double-round robin tournament, followed by a bronze final and a final. That is a total of eight rounds, plus if necessary sudden death blitz games. Time controls are 25 minutes per game, with 5 seconds increment per move. The games have a running commentary for spectators in an adjoining auditorium, and are also being transmitted live on Playchess and by the official web site (link below).

Results of rounds 5 + 6 (and tiebreaks)
Round 5: Sunday, January 4th 2009, 14:20h
Magnus Carlsen 1-0 Peter Svidler
Kjetil Lie 0-1 Hikaru Nakamura
Round 6: Sunday, January 4th 2009, 15:40h
Peter Svidler 1-0 Kjetil Lie
Hikaru Nakamura ½-½ Magnus Carlsen

The GM Swiss Tournament in Gjøvik
A strong and challenging tournament with many grandmasters, at least six above 2600, is taking place as part of the Chess Festival in Gjøvik. It offers good opportunities for title norms of all types. The tournament was open for players with GM-, IM-, WGM-, WIM-, FM- or WFM-titles, and anyone else with an official FIDE rating of at least 2100 at registration. A limited number of players with rating below 2100 were included. The tournament is being played at the Thon Hotel Gjøvik.

The event is a nine round Swiss, one round a day except at the free day Saturday January 3rd, when it was possible to participate in the Open Norwegian Rapid-chess Championship. Time limits: 40 moves in two hours, then 20 moves in one hour, and finally 30 minutes for the rest of the game (total seven hours). Money prizes: numbers 1-15 get Euro 2000, 1500, 1000, 800, 600, 400, 300, 250, 200, 175, 150, 140, 130, 120, 100, plus 250 Euro to the best female player, to the best player with rating 2200-2299 and the best player with rating under 2200. In total 8615 Euro.

Standings after six rounds
# Player rating points seed performance
1 GM Sergei Tiviakov 2686 4.5 1 2625 (-3.30)
2 GM Vadim Malakhatko 2633 4.5 3 2642 (+1.40)
3 GM Oleg Korneev 2623 4.5 4 2500 (-6.70)
4 GM Geetha.N. Gopal 2548 4.5 8 2642 (+8.40)
5 GM Nick E De Firmian 2545 4.5 9 2635 (+8.30)
6 FM Kjetil Stokke 2334 4.5 22 2423 (+10.95)
7 GM Boris Savchenko 2648 4.0 2 2694 (+3.20)
8 GM Mateusz Bartel 2602 4.0 6 2553 (-2.00)
9 GM Kaido Kulaots 2556 4.0 7 2643 (+6.30)
10 GM Aloyzas Kveinys 2533 4.0 10 2614 (+6.30)
11 IM Jon Ludvig Hammer 2522 4.0 11 2532 (+3.00)
12 IM Anna Zozulia 2380 4.0 17 2334 (-3.60)
13 Nijat Azad Abasov 2363 4.0 18 2419 (+6.45)
14 WGM Zeinab Mamedjarova 2351 4.0 19 2379 (+4.50)
15 WIM Katarzyna Toma 2230 4.0 28 2220 (-1.05)
16 GM Mikheil Mchedlishvili 2615 3.5 5 2512 (-4.90)
17 IM Frode Elsness 2440 3.5 12 2427 (+0.60)
18 IM Sasha Kaplan 2425 3.5 13 2338 (-5.40)
19 IM Maxim L Devereaux 2415 3.5 14 2410 (+0.50)
20 IM Israel Caspi 2408 3.5 15 2350 (-2.30)
21 IM Eirik Gullaksen 2400 3.5 16 2376 (-1.05)
22 Daniel Jakobsen Kovachev 2227 3.5 29 2284 (+7.35)
23 Lasse Østebø Løvik 2167 3.5 41 2320 (+17.85)
24 Jon Kristian Haarr 2057 3.5 58 2325 (+30.75)
Official tournament site