Cuban Berdayes leads before the closing of Capablanca Chess Championship

 HAVANA, Cuba, May 19 (ACN) The best chance of victory for Cuba is with Dylan Berdayes, who will assume as solo leader the farewell of the Open group in the Varadero 2025 Capablanca International Chess Tournament.

The current national runner-up reached the eighth round accompanied at the top by Colombian Santiago Avila and Costa Rican Sergio Duran, but defeated the latter and remained alone at the top owner of seven units.

That victory was combined with the draw signed by Avila with the Cuban Omar Almeida and changed the panorama just before the end of the event

Avila has 6.5 units and is next to Dylan, while Almeida reached six and by tiebreaker occupies the third position.

For the farewell match Dylan will be in the middle with Azeri Azer Mirzoev (6 points), Avila with Mexican Luis Carlos Torre (6) and Almeida against Duran (6).

In the Elite section, which gathers the five top players, dawned Monday with the Russian Volodar Murzin on top, owner of 5.5 points, but he will watch the closing from the sidelines because he has the individual rest of the day.

As a consequence, it is not in his hands to keep the crown, as the Denmark's Jonas Bulh-Bjerre shows five points and will be the opponent of the Macedonian Eveny Romanov for the bye... a win will put him on top and even with a draw it will be necessary to resort to a tiebreaker.

On Sunday Bjerre rested as part of a ninth round in which Murzin defeated Cuba's Carlos Daniel Albornoz for the second time. He did it in 38 moves of a Sicilian defense and the host dropped to the last position of the order with only 1.5 lines.

In the other Sunday duel, Romanov and the Russian Arseniy Nesterov made peace in 23 moves of a Queen Pawn opening to end with totals of four and two points, respectively.

Nesterov will rival Albornoz and regardless of the result, he already has the third place in the group.