The 2019 Reykjavik Open Pub Quiz – Local winners!

The 2019 Reykjavik Open Pub Quiz was held on Friday, April 12th. The Quiz has become an essential part of the Open and always has a very nice turnout.

Previous winners of the event include Magnus Carlsen who won with the team “MC Hammer” along with his childhood friend Jon Ludvig Hammer.

Familiar faces winning the pub quiz in 2015!

The Quiz always has questions about chess, chess culture, chess history and recent events. The winners this year managed to rack up an impressive 25.5 points but most of the other teams were around 18-20 correct answers.

Nils Grandelius a former winner didn’t find his form this team with his girlfriend Ellen and team GrandEllen didn’t manage a second victory in the quiz. Despite being a second in the Carlsen-Caruana match the team failed a question on a game from the match. A lot of laughter was shared when Nils claimed that he was asleep when the actual games were played so he was excused!

The most trouble seemed to be had when some celebrities were shown who shared a high school with a famous player and also on the question about a move director who had chess scenes in at least two of his movies.

In recent years the event has always been won by one of our foreign guests so this time, along with a gift from the chess book store, the cup for the win was of actual Icelandic lava which is a nice commemorative piece to take away from Iceland. The Icelandic team of Adalsteinn Thorarensen (multiple 2nd and 3rd place finisher) and his younger teammate Gauti Pall Jonsson proved to be the correct mixture of knowledge to capture the win. The team called itself “Mjófirðingar” which roughly translates to a thin fjord, which is the name of a fjord from where their ancestors are.