Catching Up on Poikovsky and Saratov
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 2:02PM
Dennis Monokroussos in Karjakin, Morozevich

Aside from the Sao Paulo/Bilbao super-tournament that just finished, two other high caliber events are well underway. One is the Karpov Tournament in Poikovsky, Russia, and the other is the Governor's Cup in Saratov - also in Russia.

Both events have had a disappointingly high percentage of draws, and in the case of the Poikovsky tournament, short draws. In eight rounds (forty games) in Poikovsky there have been 31 draws and only nine decisive games. With one round to go, Sergey Karjakin, on the strength of his win in round eight, has a half-point lead over Etienne Bacrot and Fabiano Caruana.

While there have been a lot of draws in Saratov as well, they've generally been harder-fought. Besides, the big story is the performance of Alexander Morozevich, who has continued his successful comeback this year with a great 4.5/5 start, giving him a TPR of 3072 and a one and a half point lead over the chase pack. Just a few months ago Morozevich was a shade under 2700; now on the live chess ratings list he's up to 2755.2. That's good enough for 12th, and another win will vault him into ninth place, ahead of Nakamura.

(N.B. Both tournament sites are in Russian, so some just looking for games and crosstables might prefer TWIC's coverage of the events, here and here, respectively.)

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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