Tonight we must start with our compliments to all the players from first ten boards for their exemplary fighting spirit that resulted with seven decided games ! On board number one Sokolov (NED) was trying hard to save an unpleasant endgame wich looked critical for him at some point. At the end he managed to make draw, probably thanks to some inacuracies made by Inarkiev (RUS).   On board number two we saw a classic opening catastrophee where the victim was Jobava (GEO) defeated by Naiditsch (GER). Other winners were Tomashevsky (RUS), Fedorchuk (UKR), Guseinov (AZE) and Nyback (FIN) with white, and Grachev (RUS) with black. After these results we have a slightly messy situation on the top with nine (!) leaders with 7,5 points who will decide among them a new European champion. In any case the tradition will be maintained, after ten championships we’ll have ten different champions. Behind the leaders there is a group of 13 players with 7,0 points   followed by 23 players with 6,5 points who have still a chance to qualify with an eventual win in the last round which means that we can expect a big tussle on first 27 boards. We remind you that the games on first 30 boards can be seen live on the official website: www.eurobudva2009.com
Yesterday when writing my comments I made a blunder, so I own a big appology to one of the participants. It is Mr. Vugar Rasulov from Azerbaijan who was tying for third place after 9 rounds, being just a FIDE master with 2392 Elo points !!! And that is not all. In spite of today's loss he already made a GM norm and is winning 62 Elo points by now!!!
By the way, among first 22 players there are no more those below 2600 Elo points. It seems that the theory of rating relativity is just a kind of excuse for those who are not able to cross tha magic line.
The last round is on schedule for tomorrow, and the games were a new champion will be decided are: Inarkiev (RUS)-Naiditsch (GER), Grachev (RUS)-Tomashevsky (RUS), Kobalia (RUS)-Guseinov (AZE), Sokolov (NED)-Nyback (FIN) and Malakhov (RUS)-Fedorchuk (UKR).
In the case that two or more players will tie for one of the critical places (champion, medals and 23 qulifiers for the World Cup), a tie-break matches will be played using the rate of play of 15 minutes plus 10 seconds bonus for each move. If the winner is not decided, two additional games will be played, this time with 5 minutes and 2 second bonus. In the case of even result, a so called sudden-death game will be played with Black having 4 minutes and White 5 minutes on the clock without any bonus. In that case White is obliged to win the game, otherwise the winner is Black. In any case, next two days will be very interesting ones.

M.Cebalo