A tough tournament for me, but a win in the last round is the best cure for all the troubles during a tournament. The final position deserves a diagram:

Colovic-Mladenovic, 1-0

This win brought me clear second place and I can rue my missed chances in my games with Bogdanovski and Dancevski in rounds 7 and 8 when I only managed to draw completely winning positions. You can download the games from the tournament here: http://www.chess-results.com/PartieSuche.aspx?lan=1&id=50023&tnr=143606&art=3

Pancevski won deservedly, with 7/9, he played solid chess throughout the event and was never in any danger. The others had their ups and downs and this was reflected in the large share for 3rd place – 8 people with 6 points. Since I rarely play in Macedonia, it was a pleasant surprise for me to find out that there’re a lot of young players coming in. It is a positive trend and let’s hope it continues.

In Saint Loius Caruana’s 5/5 reminded me of Reuben Fine’s 5.5/6 in the AVRO in 1938 (this was also noted by Kevin Spraggett on his blog). Carlsen finally won a game in his style (with black against Aronian) while Topalov beat Vachier in a Najdorf when the latter misevaluated the position with the opposite-coloured bishops. Aronian and Nakamura seem sub-par so far. The tournament continues today with the second half and it is Carlsen, if anyone, who can try to mount a challenge to the fabulous Fabiano.