It's a thrill a minute in Astrakhan, where the players are doing all they can to force organizers to outlaw draws altogether. Here's a review of today's scintillating action:
Akopian - Svidler: A Gruenfeld-turned-Symmetrical English was drawn by repetition in 23 moves.
Alekseev - Ivanchuk was a 5.Nc3 Petroff (I'll show a cute moment from this game in a later post), and although White was unable to drum up any attacking chances, he did enjoy a slight pull in the ending. Alekseev made him work, but Ivanchuk was able to construct a fortress and held the draw in 43 moves.
Gashimov - Gelfand was also a 5.Nc3 Petroff (and you guys thought you missed 1.e4 in the Anand-Topalov match. Ha!), but unlike Topalov - Gelfand from Linares, Black's king stayed safe enough throughout. This game had a funny finish leading to a perpetual check (in 28 moves), and I'll also cover this game (and its surprising counterpart) in that same subsequent post.
Inarkiev - Leko saw the ever-popular Neo-Archangelsk. They followed a Karjakin - Shirov game from Wijk aan Zee earlier this year until Inarkiev varied with 18.Be3. Leko seemed well-prepared, and he soon equalized and even enjoyed a tiny edge. Nevertheless, the rook and opposite-colored bishop ending was hard to win, and although Leko pressed in it for 25 moves or so he was unable to win, and they split the point on move 56.
Mamedyarov - Eljanov was a Ragozin. They followed theory for 17 moves, and although there was eventually a new move there didn't seem to be any big new idea, and the game looked like a pretty routine draw (by repetition in 36 moves).
Ponomariov - Radjabov was hard to categorize: I guess one can call it a Double Fianchetto system against the Gruenfeld (or maybe the Schlechter Slav). Radjabov had little difficulty neutralizing White's normal first-move edge, and the game was a draw by repetition in 33 moves. (Since the repetition was rather silly, with White playing Kg1-g2-g1-g2 and Black going ...Kg8-g7-g8-g7, I wonder if they are already in fact using the Sofia rules.)
Wang Yue - Jakovenko was a Catalan, though not one of the lines tried in the Anand-Topalov games. White seemed to be winning this game, or at least nearly so, but erred near the end and allowed Jakovenko to set up an elementary drawing formation. Had White played 34.Nc4, he may have had a winning advantage with 34...Rb4 35.Ne5 Rb2 36.b7, followed in due course by a rook move attacking the knight, or Nc4-d6 and a rook move, followed by queening. Even after the game's 34.b7?! Nxf3, 35.Ra8 or 35.Rc8 would have maintained winning chances, as 35...Rd2 36.Ra/c3 stops the perpetual. After 35.Re8? Rd2, Wang Yue realized what he had done, and the game was agreed drawn.
So, the leaderboard looks exactly as it did yesterday, just with everyone enjoying half a point more. The leaders, with 2/3, are Gashimov, Gelfand, Leko, Ponomariov and Eljanov.
Games and more info here.