Photo by Instituto del Deporte del Estado de Yucatán

Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk, the number two chess player in the world, proved himself the best in Yucatan by winning the twentieth Carlos Torre Repetto Memorial Chess Tournament Saturday.

The final match of the weeklong tourney, which pitched Ivanchuk against Pentala Harikrisna of India, similarly a Grandmaster, was held in front of El Castillo, the great pyramid at Chichen Itza. The competition was broadcast live on television and over the Internet.

Ivanchuk won the first match in the morning, but Harikrisna managed to even the score in the second round, forcing a tiebreaker, which the two men agreed to immediately play, even though they had been in front of the chessboard for 10 hours. Ivanchuk won the tiebreaker and became champion of Latin America’s biggest open chess tournment.

For more details and a list of all the participants, visit the Instituto del Deporte del Estado de Yucatan (IDEY) Web site.