Wijk aan Zee Round 6: A Quick Roundup
After a long day, here's a quick summary of the results. I already noted that all the leaders drew their games in group A, and pretty quickly. Fortunately, the last three games to finish all finished with a winner. First of all, there's Kramnik's win over van Wely. Apparently van Wely got confused or suffered from Stockholm Syndrome and played the King's Indian. Kramnik played the Gligoric System, neutralized Black's attacking ambitions, and outplayed him in an ending, complete with a piece sac. That put Kramnik into a swelling tie for second, still a point and a half behind Shirov.
Dominguez beat Tiviakov with the first 1.d4 of his chess career, and now he's at +1. Leko was the day's other winner, winning in characteristic fashion against Caruana. Caruana sacrificed material for an attack; Leko accepted it, fought off the attack, and won.
Standings After Round 6:
1. Shirov 5½
2-5. Nakamura, Carlsen, Kramnik, Ivanchuk 4
6. Dominguez 3½
7-9. Anand, Leko, Karjakin 3
10-12. Short, Tiviakov, Caruana 2
13-14. Smeets, van Wely 1
Round 7 Pairings:
Caruana - Anand
Tiviakov - Leko
Smeets - Dominguez
van Wely - Karjakin
Short - Kramnik
Nakamura - Shirov (Now the pressure on Shirov starts to ramp up.)
Carlsen - Ivanchuk
In the B-Group, Anish Giri continued his ridiculously successful event, defeating Nyback with Black. To be fair, though, he was in big trouble through much of the game, so this goes under the heading of "better lucky than good" (and better still lucky and good). His 5/6 gives him a 2920 TPR, still better than everyone in all three tournaments except for Shirov. He's a point ahead of Ni Hua and Erwin L'Ami.
In the C-Group, Ray Robson is still on fire, winning again to reach 5½/6. Despite his hot streak, he's only half a point ahead of Li Chao, who was the recipient of a staggering gift from Kjetl Lie. Lie managed to parlay a queen ending with an extra pawn, no danger and no enemy passed pawns into a loss. It just goes to show, once again, that almost no position can't be lost if a player is really determined.
Reader Comments