The Daily Update: Russian Championship, European Blitz and Rapid Championships
The women finally got a day off (or rather, a guaranteed day off; there were days off already for winners when they finished their matches without tiebreaks), but there was action at the Russian Championship. Only two of the seven games had a winner, but one was very important in the race for first. Sergey Karjakin defeated Igor Kurnosov with Black in a Berlin, and thereby caught up with Peter Svidler in first place with 5.5/8; Alexander Grischuk and Ian Nepomniachtchi are half a point behind.
Surprisingly, given the previous figures, the Live Top List has Karjakin in 7th, behind Grischuk and Veselin Topalov. As I had interpreted the last standings given there, it seemed that Karjakin was in fifth two rounds ago, and since then has scored 1.5/2 against players rated about 100-110 points lower rated than he is. That should be a net rating gain, but he seems to have lost a point or two on the list. Whatever the story, his general trend for the year has been very good - living in Russia and working with Yuri Dokhoian seems to be agreeing with him - and perhaps the battle for the top 1990er will be rejoined in full.
Another big, recent event - or pair of events - that flew under my radar (and apparently that of [most of?] the other "usual suspects" as well until after it finished) took place in Warsaw, Poland over this past weekend. On Friday the 17th the European Blitz Championship was played; Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won with 22/26, Vassily Ivanchuk came in second with 20 and Ruslan Ponomariov finished third with 19.5. Then on Saturday and Sunday it was time for the European Rapid Championship, and it finished in a six-way tie for first. On tiebreaks, the top three were Zoltan Almasi, Ivanchuk (again!) and Vugar Gashimov.
There were plenty of stars in the two events, and I'd expect to find many beautiful games and interesting opening ideas in the database files. The tournament site is here, while easy access to the results and both events' games can be found here.
Reader Comments (2)
Ivanchuk lost the semifinal against Gashimov, so the proper order is 1. Almasi, 2. Gashimov, 3. Ivanchuk, 4. Shirov.
For the time being, the live rating list only includes the first seven rounds of the Russian Championship, not yet round 8 (see list of events covered just below the black-green panel). As of today, both Grischuk and Karjakin should be ahead of Topalov, a close call on who is 5th and who is 6th on the list.
As for the European Rapid Championship, they did a rather poor PR job (or didn't care) prior to the event. I followed most rounds live - interesting games include Ivanchuk-Nyzhnyk, Korobov-Jussupow, Swiercz-Shirov ... and many others.
[DM: Thanks on both counts! I forgot to look "under the fold" on the LTL, stopping with the date.]