Cuba with good results at Menorca's Chess Open

Cuban Michel Alejandro Diaz is in 25th place with four points out of a possible five and is the best placed Cuban in the Menorca Chess Open, a competition that has the experienced Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk as the sole leader.

The maximum winner of the Capablanca in Memoriam tournaments is the only one among the more than 300 contestants with a perfect pace in the five rounds held. In Thursday's double program he defeated the Cuban runner-up, Dylan Berdayes, and then the Indian Sarin Nihal, registered with the highest Elo coefficient (2687 points) of the tournament
As for Michel Alejandro, he also had a perfect double round: he defeated the Indian Sai Agni Jeevitesh and shortly after the American Alexander Katz. He had lost in the third round to India's Varshini M Sahithi and his next opponent will be Abhimanyu Puranik, also from that Asian nation.

After the setback against Ivanchuk, Dylan was held to a draw in his duel against Bulgarian Lachezar Yordanov and with 3.5 points is in 31st place. With a similar accumulated score, although tied in 43rd place by tiebreaker, Ernesto Fernandez from Havana is moving up.
He sealed his two most recent outings by splitting honors with Bulgaria's Deyan Samuil Kostov and Spain's Guerau Masage.

Completing the performance of the Cuban team was Carlos Daniel Albornoz, double winner on the day over the German Rafael Sabirov and the Irishman Zalan Nemeth. These results could mark the expected reaction of a discreet start that weighed down his harvest, now rounded off in 3.5 points valid to occupy the 69th place.

The Menorca Open has established itself as one of the most demanding tournaments among those organized on Spanish soil. On this occasion it gathers 326 contestants, eight of them with an Elo higher than 2600 points.