12-year-old Vera Vujovic and GM Ivan Ivanisevic win Serbian Semifinals 2024

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The Semifinals of the Serbian Chess Championship 2024 took place from 5-11 January in Paracin, Serbia. The event was played in two sections, Open and Women, with four qualification spots in each tournament for the Serbian National Championship which will be held later this year.

Scoring 6.5 points, GM Ivan Ivanisevic and GM Suat Atalik tied for the first place in the Open event. Despite a slow start and a surprising loss in the second round, the top-seeded Ivan Ivanisevic lived up to the expectations and won the event thanks to better tiebreaks, while Suat Atalik won silver medal. As many as four players tied for bronze and two qualification seats for the National Championship Finals. With the best tiebreaks, IM Nikola Radovanovic won bronze and booked his place for the final event, and GM Aleksandar Kovacevic came fourth taking the last available seat for the Serbian Championship 2024. Three girls competing in the Open section scored well. IM Teodora Injac finished the event with 5.5 points in the 10th position, WIM Sofia Pogorelskikh had 4.5 points and earned 37.8 ELO points, and WGM Jovana Eric scored 4 points earning 34.2 ELO points.

12-year-old WFM Vera Vujovic won the Women’s tournament with an impressive score of 6.5 points. Vera lost the first round against Andrea Stankovic, but bounced back and connected six victories. A draw in the penultimate round was enough to secure the first place with the round to spare. WIM Jovana Srdanovic clinched silver with the score of 6 points, while WFM Viktoria Bukhteeva won bronze medal with 5.5 points and better tiebreak criteria than Anastasia Grozdanovic who booked the last available seat for Women’s National Championship.

Final standings – Serbian Semifinals 2024: