Other Events: Unive Finishes, Finalists Set at Cap D'Agde, Plus the World Youth Championships
1. It wasn't quite as uninspiring as the first round, but the last round of the Unive Crown Group saw a couple of relatively quick, low-energy draws. Rounds 2-5 were all spectacular though, so I'm not inclined to complain. The final standings:
1. Vachier-Lagrave 4.5
2. Shirov 3.5
3. Giri 3
4. Tiviakov 1
2. In Cap D'Agde, Nakamura defeated Le Quang Liem 3-1 while Ivanchuk beat Bu Xiangzhi 2-0; they'll play in the finals tomorrow. Nakamura overpressed in the first game and didn't have anything to speak of in the second game. It took a long time, but LQL finally slipped up, and it was on to blitz tiebreaks. The Vietnamese GM seemed too shaken psychologically by his failure in the second game, and Nakamura rolled to victory.
The second match was cleaner. Ivanchuk played a little combination netting him a rook and two pawns for a pair of minor pieces, and many moves later managed to convert it in the endgame. In the rematch Bu was forced to play more aggressively than his position could justify, and he lost that one too.
So tomorrow we have a rematch of the 2008 final, which was won by Nakamura 1.5-.5.
3. The World Youth Championships just finished in Porto Carras, Greece. This is where all the Under-Age X world championship titles are set, except for the major one for players under-20. You can access all the results starting from this page. American players (including one of my former students) did pretty well, with Steven Zierk's convincing victory in the U-18 event (ahead of 5 GMs and 12 IMs!) the most impressive of the lot. (HT: Chris Hinman)
Reader Comments (1)
Some comments on Unive: Today's draws were sort of understandable - Vachier-Lagrave secured tournament victory, and Shirov may have had some mercy with Tiviakov and didn't object to doubling his score ... . Interestingly, Tiviakov had won last year in an only slightly weaker field (Ivanchuk, Polgar, a younger Giri), then his win against Polgar was decisive as the other eleven games were all drawn! This was reason enough to re-invite him, and he lives in Groningen nearby the tournament venue.
For what it's worth, Vachier-Lagrave's 2880 TPR was only slightly less than Carlsen's 2901 in Nanjing. High time they meet each other again (so far, apparently they played two classical games in 2005 and one Cap d'Agde rapid game in 2006) - it will happen in Wijk aan Zee 2011, and they'll also play blitz games in Moscow since Vachier-Lagrave won the Aeroflot blitz qualifier.