STEPANAKERT, OCTOBER 5, NOYAN TAPAN. Two international chess tournaments started in Nagorno Karabakh's capital Stepanakert. The "A" series of competitions of "Karabakh - 2005" tournament has especially strong chess-players. 10 strongest grand masters play in it. According to the FIDE classification scale, the series of competitions is of 17 class. After 2 tours Ashot Anastasian (Armenia) is the top-player of the series of competitions. He gained 2 points. The results of the other participants are the following: Levon Aronian (Armenia), Bu Ksianzhi (China) 1.5 points, Alexei Dreev (Russia), Karen Asrian (Armenia) Ivan Sokolov (Holland) 1 point, Hikaru Nakamura (US), Bartolomey Madzeya (Poland), Vasiliy Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Viktor Bougan (Moldova) 0.5 points. The "F" series of competitions also having strong players is of 11th class. 20 chess-players representing 7 countries are included in it. After 2 tours 3 grand masters are on the top: Yevgeni Sveshnikov (Latvia), Sergei Grigoriants (Armenia) and Tigran L.Petrosian (Armenia) who gained 1.5 points.

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