Other Events: Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw...
In Poikovsky, the players were up to their usual miserable tricks: four draws in five games, three of them very short. (23, 23 and 26 moves.) Only Bacrot decided to play a real game, and he was rewarded, grinding out a tough win against Caruana in 78 moves. After five rounds there have been five decisive games, and Bacrot, Karjakin and Efimenko lead with +1 scores. Twenty draws four rounds remain. Hopefully none of these guys gets invited back next year.
Yesterday, I had expressed hope that the Governor's Cup in Saratov, Russia would prove more exciting. How could it not with players like Morozevich, Shirov and Ponomariov? Sure, Leko's playing, but he has been a pretty feisty player so far this year. So what happened in round 1? Six games, six draws. It's not as bad as it sounds, though. One game was a little short (30 moves), one a little long (57), and most went to around the time control on move 40. So there was an effort, just no wins.
In Swiss events it tends to be different, and in Oslo the increasingly unretired Matthew Sadler continues to shine. He won in round 8 with Black against Elsness, the only player within half a point of him going into the round. Ironically, the four players in the next score group...you guessed it - drew - and now Sadler leads the next group (of 9 players!) by a whopping 1.5 points with one round to go. His TPR so far has been 2819, which bodes pretty well for his continued return.
Reader Comments (1)
Poikovsky 2011 isn't the most exciting event ever played - which might not change in the remaining rounds. Still I think the draw problem is a bit exaggerated: there were a few (too many!) premature draws, but even for several games that took less than 30 moves no questions remained in the final position - i.e. with Sofia rules they may have lasted a bit longer, but without changing the results or adding "content" to the games. One reason for many draws, also in Saratov, might be the relatively balanced field: even Morozevich, Shirov and Ponomariov cannot win on demand, and of course don't want to lose on demand. Today's round had Leko-Morozevich and Ponomariov-Shirov - arguably understandable that the favorites didn't want to risk too much on the very first day.
By comparison, Bilbao has many decisive games thanks to Ivanchuk and Vallejo (Nakamura-Aronian today was the first non-drawn game that didn't involve either player!). Ivanchuk cannot play everywhere [even if he tries ...], and underdog Vallejo has losing chances in every single game, and winning chances partly because the opponent pushes too hard or underestimates him. But Russian events don't need an underdog just to have a Russian participant ... .
Back to Poikovsky and regarding "Hopefully none of these guys gets invited back next year.": Top seeds Karjakin and Jakovenko at least aren't repeat offenders, last year they scored +4-1=6 and +4-2=5 - for some reason they don't get going this year. Surprising that Bologan (also +4-1=6) wasn't re-invited. Repeat offenders are Onischuk (last year +1-1=9), Rublevsky and Motylev (+0-3=8) and many non-games - the lowlight was their game against each other (14 moves, 1 piece and one pawn swapped, handshake).