Gibraltar, Round 9: Ivanchuk, Short Keep on Winning
With one round to go, Vassily Ivanchuk and Nigel Short have broken away from the field in Gibraltar. Ivanchuk beat Caruana - with Black, no less - while Short defeated Mikhalevski, and now "Chuky" has 8 while Short has 7.5. The nearest pursuers have 6.5 points, so Ivanchuk is guaranteed clear second at worst. He'll have White vs. Fridman in the last round while Short has Black against Bologan, so Ivanchuk's chances of some piece of first, probably clear first, are excellent. Further good news for Ivanchuk is that he's in great shape on the live rating list. As of this writing his wins from rounds 8 and 9 haven't been taken into account; when they are, my guess is that he will have jumped past Nakamura into 7th, a minuscule amount behind Topalov. If he defeats Fridman (I suspect a quick handshake, however), then I expect he'll hop both Topalov and Karjakin into fifth.
Further down the table, Viktor Korchnoi won in round 9, has 6 points, and will have White against Vallejo Pons in the last round. Go, Viktor Lvovich! If he wins, or even if he draws, it would be an incredible performance for a man of nearly 80 years of age. (Indeed, it would be the best performance of most chess players' lives, at any age. Are there any other performances by players of that age that even come close? The great swan songs of Lasker and Smyslov came when they were in their 60s, a dozen or more years younger than Korchnoi is now.) His TPR of 2670 is in the top 10 there, with only Short's 2849 and Ivanchuk's ridiculous 2947 leaving it in the dust.
Reader Comments (6)
I could see Ivanchuk pulling off Korchnoi's results in 39 years ;)
That's really awesome about Korchnoi and puts a lot of people's doubts about chess and age to rest.
Dennis,
Any idea why the round 9 game Caruana - Ivanchuk (0-1) wasn't displayed with all the other live games on the site? The board was blank all day and still no game posted post-partum.
Btw, for those who didn't notice, the site has monroi boards showing the top 35 boards or so every round.
[DM: I saw the game live on ICC, so it was posted somewhere!]
Yes---I may follow the games tomorrow just to see Korchnoi give it a go! No quick draw, Viktor...
Go Viktor! OK, he's significantly worse (move 23), but this is great stuff. Vallejo Pons probably made a great choice in using the Blumenfeld against him, but let's see what happens...
Ah, Viktor, 29.Ra7!! Makes me think of "branching time" again---as if in another universe you played that move---but no, there is just our one Principal Variation. Well long life makes patzers of us all. Sto lyet!