Cubans do not finish well the Menorca Chess Open

The Cuban Ernesto Fernandez suffered his only setback in the closing and dropped to the place in the Menorca Chess Open, although it was the best performance of a Cuban in a match won by the Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk.

Despite overcoming more than one difficult opponent, and even managed to defeat the Indian world junior champion, Venkatesh Pranav, sixth prequalified, Ernesto did not have the best answers on Sunday to stop the tactical game of the American Andy Woodward.

With the setback, Ernesto was left with six points out of a possible nine and the tiebreaker formula did not favor him to improve his placement. Before Sunday's slip, he had four wins and an equal number of draws.

Less fortunate were the performances of Michel Alejandro Diaz, Dylan Berdayes and Carlos Daniel Albornoz, placed 43rd, 52nd and 65th, in that order.

Ivanchuk's performance was spectacular, as he was the only one in the top ten who was over 50 years of age. The maximum winner of the Capablanca in Memoriam tournaments signed seven victories and only two players managed to finish the match with equality on the board.

The second and third places went to China's Shanglei Lu and India's Murali Karthikeyan, both with 7.5 points, but placed in that order by tiebreaker.