The former Yugoslavians Predrag Nikolic and Ivan Sokolov moved to Netherlands long ago. They often play together in the same tournaments. This time they even succeeded together by sharing 1-2 places with 7 points out of 9. This result allowed crossing the 'magic' threshold of 2700 for Ivan Sokolov. Malakhov played confidently as usual and scored 6.5 points. He was followed by a dense group of players. The Spaniard Vallejo scored 5 points, then the French Loran Fressinet and the Scottish Jonathan Rowson shared places 5-6 scoring 4.5 points each. It was an obvious success for the latter one since his rating was lower by 100 points than that one of the other players, apart from the two Icelanders and the American Nick de Firmian.
Viorel Bologan can hardly be pleased by his result - the 7th place with 4 points, especially after his recent fairy performance in Dortmund. Viorel plays without a break in the recent time, which made his decrease in performance quite predictable.
The Iceland grandmaster Hannes Stefansson (2.5 points) and Trostur Torhalsson (2 points) concluded the tournament table. The American de Firmian also scored 2 points.
Tomas Oral (Czechia) and Henric Danielssen (Denmark) won the challengers opening, scoring 7 of 9. The Czech grandmaster Votava scored 6 points.