The decisive game of the Grand Prix Finale 2019: Mateusz Surma 2p (Poland; left) v. Artem Kachanovskyi 2p (Ukraine)

The Grand Prix Finale is the tournament that determines the winner of the European Grand Prix – a series of tournaments held during the calendar year.

The tournament brings together the 16 most successful players. At first all the players are divided into four groups. A round robin system is used to play three rounds inside each group. Two players from each group proceed to the knockout stage. In the knockout, the eight players that passed the group stage play three more rounds to determine the winner.

This year the Grand Prix Finale was held from 16 to 19 January 2020 in Leksand, Sweden. The selected 16 players represented 12 different countries.

The first surprising result came during the group stage: Daniel Hu 5d (United Kingdom) won his games against Pavol Lisy 2p (Slovakia) and Tanguy Le Calvé 1p (France). Daniel qualified to the next stage of the tournament from the first place in his group, while the second place was taken by Stanislaw Frejlak 7d (Poland) who qualified as well. In the rest of the groups, the results turned out to be more predictable.

In the quarterfinal, surprisingly Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia) lost to Stanislaw Frejlak 7d (Poland) by half a point.

The final game was played between Artem Kachanovskyi 2p (Ukraine) and Mateusz Surma 2p (Poland). Mateusz won the game, thus becoming the winner of the tournament and the champion of the European Grand Prix 2019.

 

 

You can find more game records, tournament table and all the other details on the Grand Prix Finale 2019 official webpage.

For more information, please see the article on the EGF website (written by Antonius Claasen).

Report by Artem