Nigel Short Wins Second Thai Open Title Despite Early Loss

GM Nigel Short won the Thai Open on Sunday after a nerve-wracking final round where top seeds GM Wang Hao and GM Paco Vallejo both lost. Short edged out GM Surya Ganguly and GM Dragun Kamil on tiebreak.

In this report we look at the final four rounds of the tournament. After round five, GMs Francisco Vallejo Pons, Wang Hao, Jozsef Horvath, Jan Gustafsson and IM Oliver Dimakiling topped the standings with 4.5 points.

On Thursday the top two boards ended in draws: Vallejo vs Wang and Horvath vs Gustafsson. As a result, no less than twelve players were tied for first place with 5.0/6. 

One of them was GM Surya Ganguly, who won in spectacular fashion:

Only two players from that logjam won their games to break away from the rest of the pack: GM Wang Hao and GM Jan Gustafsson. It was the Chinese grandmaster, the top seed in Pattaya, who decided their mutual game in round eight in his favor:

As the only player on 7.0/8, GM Wang Hao was the clear favorite to win the Thai Open. It wasn't meant to be.

The Chinese GM chose the Petroff and might have been happy with a draw. GM Surya Ganguly's choice of 5.Qe2, which quickly leads to a queenless middlegame, was slightly surprising perhaps.

Eventually the players only had seven pawns and two bishops each, and White's edge seemed minimal. However, the end Indian GM ground down his opponent showing excellent edgame skills:

GM Paco Vallejo then also lost his game, against the rather unknown player GM Kamil Dragun of Poland. Black lost a pawn and then another one, still had some positional compensation but eventually Dragun decided the game in a rook ending:

GM Nigel Short joined Ganguly and Dragun in first place by winning a long game against Indian IM Diptayan Ghosh:

As it turned out, Short had the best tiebreak and was declared the winner. After losing to Oliver Barbosa in the third round and drawing to IM Max Illingworth in round seven he probably didn't expect that!

The top three players shared 220,000 Baht and earned about 2,100 Euros (U.S. $2265) each. Short also won the Thai Open three years ago in Bangkok. 

2015 Thai Open | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full standings here.)

The tournament took place in the Dusit Thani Resport in the Thai Beach resort of Pattaya. Close to 300 players from 42 countries played in two groups. Next month the World Schools Individual Championship will be held in the same location.