Cuban Elier Miranda is crowned at Bahamas chess tournament

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 12 (ACN) Cuban Elier Miranda completed 6.5 points in nine rounds and by his best tiebreaker won the crown of the Nassau 2024 Orjan Lindroth Chess Memorial in Nassau, Bahamas.

Miranda, champion of Cuba in 2023, closed his performance with a draw against Jamaican Joshua Christie and after applying the tiebreaker formulas, he beat Canadian Raja Panjwani and US player Enrico Sevillano on the podium.

Panjwani, who reached the last round sharing the lead and could not go beyond a draw with his compatriot Mike Ivanov in their final duel, took second place, while Sevillano completed the podium with a victory over his fellow countryman Tyrell Harriott.

Miranda's start was discreet, characterized by the parity in crossings with lower level opponents. In the second half of the tournament he managed to improve the course with successes against good level players, such as Sevillano himself and Praveen Balakrishnan, also from US.

The other Cuban, Omar Almeida, was in fourth place after completing six units. In his final round, he could not get past a draw with Alisa Melekhina, another US representative.

In spite of not conceding a defeat -he recorded three wins and six draws-, he returns home with an Elo loss of almost five points.

Bahamas' competition was attended by 20 players from five countries and was part of the Cubans' preparation for the Chess Olympiad of Budapest 2024, to be held in September.