The 1st round of the 2018 GAMMA Reykjavik Open went relatively upset free for the top seeds. As usual the first round of a swiss brings some unevenly matched games but nontheless the pairings were much more evenly matched than in recent years because of the use of accelerated swiss pairings meaning that the top seeds had to deal with 2300 rated players instead of 1900 like in recent years!
The first upset was on board 4 where Baskaran Adhiban failed to convert what looked at first like a promising ending.
Adhiban got a bishop endgame where it looked like he could make a passed pawn on the kingside but couldn’t make any progress against his opponent and a draw was agreed.
Local FM Dagur Ragnarsson made a nice draw against GM Konstantin Landa. Dagur played very actively in the opponent and probably had some chances to outwit his opponent before he resourcefully defended a pawn down endgame with active play. A well earned draw!
Another local player, Kristjan Edvardsson never let Sergey Grigoriants threaten him too much and after a threefold repetition around move 30 the draw was agreed.
The only full upsets of the day were pulled by Baldur Teodor Petursson who defeated Marina Brunello while Brazilian Henry Singer Gonzalez won against Dan Bisby. Baldur will face off against youtuber John Bartholomew in the 2nd round. Young Isak Orri Karlsson (1288) also should be mentioned as he defeated a player rated over 1800!
Many players will be taking a bye in the morning round but we see plenty of interesting matchups in the 2nd round when some strong IM’s face the top seeds. Local eyes will be on board 3 where local IM Gudmundur Kjartansson plays against Gata Kamsky.
Stay tuned and make sure to watch the broadcast of the long day tomorrow on chess.com/tv
Here is one of the more interesting games from the top boards in the 1st round:
