Shanghai Round 3: Shirov Wins, Co-Leads With Aronian
Sunday, September 5, 2010 at 11:01AM Alexei Shirov won an up-and-down game against Wang Hao today, and thereby caught Levon Aronian in first at the halfway point of the Shanghai Masters. With White, Shirov started the game in fine shape. He was slightly better in the opening, and when his opponent sacrificed a pawn for play he took it and was repulsing the enemy attack. The critical moment came when Wang Hao tried 22...Bxd4, a desperate piece sac. Had Shirov taken it, he would probably be winning. Black's attack looks scary, but I haven't found any way to make it into something real. Instead, Shirov declined the sac, and his reward was a probably lost position.
Having been handed this chance, Wang Hao squandered it. He was winning in the middlegame, slightly better in the endgame, and even up until near the end had a theoretically drawn rook and pawn vs. rook and bishop ending. His problem, I bet, is that he only knew the "second-rank defense" in the rook and bishop vs. rook ending, and that was unavailable to him on account of the extra pawn. If he knew the old standby, the more traditional Cochrane defense, he could have held. It was very clear that he didn't know it (he will very soon after this tournament, I have no doubt!), and as a result went down without much of a fight.
So Shirov is now tied with Levon Aronian for first. Aronian was under pressure from Vladimir Kramnik, but the latter's 30.Nb3 (rather than 30.Qf4) let him escape with an immediate draw.
After the first cycle, Aronian and Shirov have 5 points (on 3-1-0 scoring), Kramnik has 3 and Wang Hao just 1.
Reader Comments (2)
Dennis, this is just a suggestion: Can you provide your PGN files for download? Personally, I can't stand that html/javascript PGN viewer that gets exported from ChessBase, because, at least on my Mac, it seems to skip ply unpredictably. Thanks. Chris
[DM: I can but won't, sorry. It's bad enough that there are sites that steal my content. (I don't mean something like fair use in copyright law, I mean the whole thing lock, stock and barrel.) I'd prefer to at least make them work a little for it.]
I have a PC and I still have the problem of the games sporadically skipping moves, which I also think is annoying. The only way I have found to avoid this problem is to click on the actual moves instead of the forward button.