King's Tournament, Round 8: Gelfand-Carlsen Drawn; Nisipeanu Wins
Boris Gelfand was probably the last, best chance for the rest of the field to catch Magnus Carlsen, and although the game was very lively he really didn't come very close to a win. Thus with two rounds to go, Carlsen is still a point ahead of Gelfand, two points ahead of Radjabov, and further ahead of everyone else.
Radjabov-Ponomariov was also drawn. Ironically, Ponomariov offered the same piece sac Gelfand played against him in last year's World Cup. The sac leads to a draw, if accepted, so both Ponomariov last year and Radjabov in 2010 rejected it, but neither player got anything for their troubles. Gelfand won the game last year, and while Radjabov didn't lose, he was the one trying to prove equality pretty much from start to finish.
There was one decisive game, and it was the local representative and alleged tournament outsider Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu who won it. He was Black against Wang Yue in a King's Indian sideline, and managed to outplay his opponent in a technical ending. That's no mean feat, as Wang Yue is a good technician, but he did it anyway. The game was slowly drifting away from the Chinese player, but it still could have been drawn with 56.Rf6! rather than 56.Rxg4? After that error, Nisipeanu played brilliantly, winning in study-like fashion. The result is that he went from a three-way tie for last into clear fourth with two rounds to go.
Standings After Round 8:
1. Carlsen 6
2. Gelfand 5
3. Radjabov 4
4. Nisipeanu 3.5
5. Ponomariov 3
6. Wang Yue 2.5
Round 9 Pairings:
Radjabov - Wang Yue
Ponomariov - Gelfand
Carlsen - Nisipeanu
Reader Comments (3)
The World-Cup black win by Gelfand with ...Ra6! was in the semi-final against Karjakin and not in the final against Ponomariov (in the final all the regular games were drawn and so they went to tiebreaks). So there is no irony here, only good homework preparation - which is what everyone is doing these days.
Did anyone else notice chessbase's little typo on their Round 8 coverage?
"Wang Yue-Nisipeanu saw the Fianchetto Variation of the King’s Gambit. White had some advantage, but Nisipeanu succeeded in exchanging queens and got an equal endgame. Then the Chinese Grandmaster misplayed the position completely and lost in the end."
hehe Apparently they're still under the influence of King Carlsen, but I think they meant "King's Indian".
Yes, expecting the King's Gambit from Wang Yue with white was a wishful thinking... but that wasn't the only typo of its kind in the chessbase coverage of round 8 - later in the game Gelfand-Carlsen, after three moves we get: "Magnus shows a mature approach: considering the tournament situation, the Norwegian chooses a solid Queen's Gambit Accepted", which should have been, of course, Queen's Gambit Declined. Again, the author, Rogozenco, presented his wish for an accepted gambit when there was none.