The very strong open tournament, already a classic on the international calendar, faces its sixth edition with the aim of continuing to grow.
Catalonia is a land of contrasts: the cold of the winter of 2025 arrives at the same time that our hearts are warmed by the start of the VI Llobregat Open Chess Tournament. The year of waiting with respect to the last edition has passed quickly for the organizing team and, no matter how much effort is used to do things in advance, there are always details to be polished as, for example, participants or last minute withdrawals.
The event has summoned the chess players at 16:00 h., starting at 16:10 h. It has been a first round that anticipates the potential game that we will enjoy until December 8 in the magnificent game room arranged at the Hotel Sercotel Sant Boi.
Alexandra Zherebtsova, player of the VI El Llobregat Open Chess Tournament (PHOTO: David Llada)
113 titlists, led by the Indian talent Pranesh Munirethinam (2630 FIDE), have arrived from all over the world to compete for the places of honor in the final Group A classification. For the statistics buffs, we have 21 GMs, 3 WGMs, 37 IMs, 8 WIMs, 28 FMs, 4 WFMs, 11 CMs and 1 WCM competing. In case you are tempted to think that Group B is weak, we anticipate that two international masters are participating.
The participation, as usual in the Llobregat Open Chess Tournament, is still very high: 135 players in Group A and 35 in Group B, for a total of 170 chess players. The coming days are going to be of maximum competition on the boards!
David Ayza León, General Secretary and Responsible of the Base Chess of the Federació Catalana d’Escacs, has rung the bell to start the VI El Llobregat Open Chess Tournament (PHOTO: David Llada)
The traditional ringing of the bell, which precedes each round of play in the tournament, has been made by David Ayza León, representing the Federació Catalana d’Escacs. The General Secretary and Responsible of the Base Chess of the Catalan federation has also honored us with a few words of congratulations to the organization, for being the tournament that gathers more grandmasters in the year and for having the highest female participation.
In sporting terms, in this first round Neeraj Harish, M. Pranesh and Cristóbal Henríquez Villagra have won on boards 1, 2 and 3, so they lead the provisional classification. The first Spanish classified is GM José Manuel López Martínez (11th).
For fans of the history of the sport, we will be unveiling in these chronicles the milestones achieved by the Llobregat Open Chess Tournament in the five previous editions:
1. Best open held in Spain in the 2022 and 2023 editions, as certified by the Consejo Superior de Deportes and the FEDA (Spanish Chess Federation).
We would like to thank our sponsors: El Llobregat (magazine), Ajuntament de Sant Boi, Generalitat de Catalunya, Aigües de Barcelona and Diputació de Barcelona, without whose invaluable help an event of this magnitude would not be possible.
You can follow the games (from 4 p.m. onwards) daily on the web: https://www.elllobregat.com
