Havana, Cuba - The Capablanca Memorial Chess tournament, organized in the resort of Varadero, finished its first segment with foreign players heading its main pooles.

Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk leads the Elite Group when defeating Cuban Leinier Dominguez and consolidated his leadership before the resting day agreed for today.

The six-time champion of these contests and owner of 2 710 Elo points beat Leinier (2723), top seed of the event, in 37 moves of a Spanish opening.

Ivanchuk totals four units in five outings and clearly tops the standings over his compatriot Yuriy Krivoruchko (2682), Bulgarian Ivan Cheparinov (2687) and Hungarian Zoltan Almasi (2688), all with 2.5 points, while Lenier and the also host Lazaro Bruzon (2681) complete the standings with 2 and 1.5 units respectively.

The Premier group is dominated by American Jeffery Xiong (2627), whose total amount reaches four points after signing peace with his countryman Samuel Sevian (2603), thay both are the leader and number two of the U-16 world ranking, respectively.

Xiong is escorted by Cubans Yuniesky Quesada (2631) and Isan Ortiz (2578), both with 3.5 points, after they both drew with Spanish Angel Arribas (2544) and the also local Camilo Gomez (2546), in that order.

Cuba achieved only one win in that group when Yuri Gonzalez (2555) defeated Chilean Ivan Morovic (2572) and in the other match of the day, the host Yusnel Bacallao (2554) signed peace with Polish Kamil Dragun (2599).

Yuri, Sevian, Dragun and Arribas, all with 2.5, Bacallao (2), Camilo (1.5) and Morovic (0.5) appeared after the leaders.