Tal Memorial, Final Round: Carlsen Defeats Nakamura, Edges Aronian For First On Tiebreaks

And so the latest edition of the traveling show comes to a close, to resume in a week or so in London. After a fair number of rounds with few to no wins, the players - except for Anand and his opponent (Gelfand on this occasion), of course - not only played some good fighting chess, they managed to draw some blood.

The biggest game turned out to be Magnus Carlsen's win over Hikaru Nakamura, who has become a pretty regular client the last year or two. Nakamura had White in a Queen's Indian, an opening that's generally pretty solid (especially for White), but Nakamura's dubious pawn sac/blunder on move 15 and a follow-up error on move 21 soon left him with a technically lost position. Carlsen being Carlsen, that was a death sentence, and the opposite-colored bishops made the game last without putting the outcome in serious doubt.

That put Carlsen into a tie for first with Levon Aronian, the clear leader coming into the round. Aronian was pushed very hard by Ian Nepomniachtchi, and had the latter won he would have come ahead of Carlsen on tiebreaks. In the end, Aronian held after 85 long moves in the last game of the tournament. Vassily Ivanchuk also had some opportunities to tie for first, but couldn't put Sergey Karjakin away, and they too finished half a point behind Carlsen and Aronian.

The Gelfand-Anand non-game was already mentioned, while Crazy Kramnik went for it against Peter Svidler but lost. Kramnik's winless -2 score wasn't good, but he did play some fighting, enterprising chess in the tournament. As for Svidler, the win brought him back to 50%.

Final Standings:

1-2. Carlsen, Aronian 5.5 (Carlsen first on tiebreaks)
3-5. Karjakin, Nepomniachtchi, Ivanchuk 5
6-7. Anand (nine draws), Svidler 4.5
8-9. Kramnik, Gelfand 3.5
10. Nakamura 3

Official site here. Some bad news: it at least looks like the traditional blitz tournament (which generally doubles as the world blitz championship) isn't being held this year. If not, maybe this has something to do with the plan to start rating blitz events at the start of the year - maybe the organizers didn't want to hold the last non-rated megablitz tournament in chess history. This is just speculation, and if I'm mistaken and the event is going to take place, I hope my readers will (gently) correct me!

Comments

[Eyal]

Congrats to Carlsen and Aronian, the only 2800 players who play like it at the moment. Carlsen’s better tiebreak was due to more games with Black, btw (first tiebreak; whereas Nepo, had he won, would have come ahead due to better Koya – third tiebreak). Somehow Carlsen always manages this year to get the better tiebreak in such cases, regardless of the system employed. (Better SB than Karjakin in Bazna – in this tournament it was actually Aronian who had the better SB; blitz playoff against Ivanchuk in Bilbao.)

Regarding Carlsen – even though the chess year isn’t quite over yet, I suppose he can be congratulated in advance on winning the Oscar for 2011… Having won at least 4 classical super-tournaments, including the two strongest ones (Bilbao & Tal Memorial), I don’t see anyone else who can possibly be an equally strong contender, regardless of the results in London. He will be the first since Kasparov to win it 3 times in a row.

The wins by Aronian and Carlsen in the final two rounds were both quite impressive, each in its own way. Aronian didn’t seem to get anything special out of the opening, but kept pressing and pressing until some chances came up; the winning tactical idea, of sacrificing his knight for two passed pawns that appeared on both sides of the board, was beautiful – especially the queen maneuvers involved (Qh8+/Qxh4/Qh8+/Qb8+/Qxb7+/Qb8/Qg8+/Qxg6). In terms of tactical resourcefulness and creativity, I really think Aronian is player no.1 at the moment. And Carlsen’s win against Nakamura was a Capablanca-like performance – “just” playing a series of simple-looking and strong moves that severely punished his opponent for every mistake he made, and confidently simplifying into an endgame which he judged far ahead to be winning (that was clear from his presentation of the game at the press conference), despite the presence of opposite-colored bishops.

[Eyal]

A question: if you had a look at the Anand-Nakamura game from the penultimate round, what do you think of Anand’s decision to take the draw by repetition when he did? (I don’t mean whether he was clearly winning; only whether there were enough realistic winning chances to justify playing on). On the ICC live broadcast, for example, Yasser Seirawan and Suat Atalik sounded genuinely shocked when they learned of the draw, so much so that they started competing in Anand-bashing (“pathetic,” “really sad to see the world champion showing such an attitude,” “Topalov or Carlsen would never ever take a draw in this position,” “Anand is losing more and more fans with each game in this tournament,” etc.); Yermolinsky, in his Game-of-the-Day video, also opined that White has to keep playing on in the final position.

[DM: If Anand were to play like he did in this tournament on a regular basis, it would be disagraceful. But as a one-off I'd want to know more before burying him with criticism - maybe he was unwell or had some personal problem weighing on him. In the normal course of things, I'd agree that his draw with Nakamura was premature: White stands better and risks nothing after something like the obvious 32.Rc1.]

[Jaideepblue]

via TWIC (after the game with Nakamura)

Are you going to win any games at this tournament?

Anand: What kind of question is that? You act as if I had a choice every day and I chose a draw. I keep trying. I'll try tomorrow we'll see. I liked white's position "I blew it obviously."

and on the finish:

30.Nc6 Rbc8 31.Na5

"I got excited because I thought this is very strong." - Anand.

31...Ba8

[Position after 31...Ba8. Anand missed 32.Rc1 Nfd7 33.Rac3 f5 he still probably should have played this line but having missed something he chose to repeat].

32.Nc6

"Once I got here I didn't see any way out. " - Anand.

[32.Rc1 Rc5 (32...Nfd7 33.Rac3 f5 "Then much too late I noticed f5." - Anand. 34.Nxc4 fxe4 "I kept missed that exf3 is check somewhere." - Anand. 35.Nxe4 Nxd5 (35...Nxc4 is the alternative with this sample line: 36.Rxc4 Rxc4 37.Rxc4 Bxd5 38.Rd4 Bxe4 39.Bxe4 Nc5 40.Bxg6 Re2+ 41.Kg3 Rxb2 42.Rxd6 a5) 36.Nexd6 "I should probably get away with this line but somehow I wasn't very keen. Maybe I missed something else. I just decided to [take the draw]" - Anand.) 33.b4]

32...Bb7

"I can come back to d4 but I've just lost two tempi. It's the most ridiculous set of moves I've made. His Rook was on b8 and his knight was on h7 and now I place them on c8 and d7. So having done this I had no way back and I had to take the draw. But anyhow I enjoyed it because at least I played an interesting game."

33.Na5 Ba8 1/2-1/2