Three brothers – Maksat, Saparmyrat and Yusup Atabayev - excelled at the Turkmenistan Chess Champion's Top League, which ended on Saturday. As expected before the start of the main tournament of the year, which was held in a round-robin system among the 14 strongest chess players in the country, the intrigue developed mainly around how the prizes would be distributed among the three brothers.

As a result, the 29-year-old international grandmaster Maksat Atabayev, who currently has a FIDE rating of 2472, became the national champion. Despite losing in the very first round to Turaev Shahrukh, Maksat eventually scored 10.5 points out of 13 possible. The 24-year-old international master Saparmyrat (rating: 2448) and 29-year-old Yusup (rating: 2516), who scored 10 points each, were half a point behind the winner, who was awarded the title of international grandmaster a month ago. To place them on the 2nd and 3rd steps of the podium, we had to resort to an additional coefficient (Sonneborn-Berger), which gave preference and, accordingly, the 2nd place to Saparmyrat.

Following the results of the tournament, the national team also included the 4th and 5th places, respectively, with 8.5 points, FIDE master Azat Nurmammedov (2408) and first-grader Amanmuhammet Hommadov (1956). If such a solid result was expected from Azat, then we can say Amanmuhammet created a sensation, ahead of such venerable rivals as the candidates for master of sports Shahrukh Turaev (6th place), Soltan Muradov (7th place), FIDE master Mergen Kakabayev (8th place) and international master Karen Grigoryan (9th place).

The performance of the only girl at the FIDE women's master tournament, Lala Shohradova (1891), who entered the top ten of the country's strongest chess players with 4.5 points, can be called quite successful. Recall that she won the right to play in the highest men's league, becoming the national champion among women a month ago.

The Chess Federation of Turkmenistan believes that the composition of both the women's and men's national teams is worthy of representing the honor of the country at official international competitions this year.

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