Dominguez Beats Maghsoodloo As Leon Semifinal Goes To Armageddon

On Saturday GM Leinier Dominguez qualified for the final of the Leon Chess Festival. The Cuban-born American grandmaster beat GM Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran by drawing the armageddon game and will play GM Jaime Santos in Sunday's final.

The live broadcast of day two.

Friday's semifinal was not bad at all, but the one on Saturday was spectacular. Dominguez seemed to be cruising with a 2-0 lead and a winning position in game three. He was basically serving for the match when everything turned around.

Maghsoodloo won that third game and also the fourth, to secure two blitz games, and also won the first of those. Dominguez recovered right on time, won the second, and then held the armageddon game as Black to qualify after all. 

Here is that moment in game three where the tables turned. Maghsoodloo's King's Indian Attack didn't go as planned, and at some point, all he could do is try to create some chaos knowing that even a draw wouldn't be enough.

Here's game six, the second blitz game that was a must-win for Dominguez. He dominated through most of the game and found a nice finish:

Below you can find all games of this semifinal. The final between Dominguez and Santos will be played on Sunday, July 17, at 8:30 a.m. Pacific / 17:30 Central Europe with commentary at Chess.com/TV.

Dominguez-Maghsoodloo | All games

The Masters tournament is part of a bigger festival that runs for a whole week. There is also an open blitz tournament (July 14-15) where the eight top finishers will qualify for a knockout final, a simultaneous exhibition with 25 boards by Dominguez on July 13, and a closed tournament (July 16-18 with four of the most promising upcoming stars of the chess world.

Find all info about these events here.