20-year old Russian GM the new Gib Masters champion

Grandmaster Vladislav Artemiev is the 2019 Gibraltar chess champion.

The 20 year old entered the tenth and final round of the Gibraltar International Chess Festival yesterday leading the field with 7½ points from a possible nine. He won the 2019 Gibraltar Masters tournament with a brilliant win against the Chinese grandmaster Yu Yangyi.

He finished the tournament on 8.5 points out of 10, half a point ahead of 19-year-old Indian grandmaster Karthikeyan Murali who scored a sensational win against the tournament top seed Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to finish second on eight points.

Artemiev takes the £25,000 cheque for first prize, while Murali takes home the £20,000 second prize. This was his first time in Gibraltar.

Meanwhile the 27-year-old former women's world champion Tan Zhongyi won the £15,000 women's first prize at the 2019 Gibraltar Masters after defeating higher-rated Serbian GM Aleksandar Indijc in the last round.

The two Ukrainian sisters, Mariya and Anna Muzychuk, both former winners of the Gibraltar women's top prize, were level with her going into the final round but couldn't match her final score of 7 out of 10 as they drew and lost their last round games respectively.