World Cup 2011: Round 7 (Finals), Day 3: Two Draws
With their draws today Peter Svidler and Vassily Ivanchuk have moved to within draw odds of winning their matches against Alexander Grischuk and Ruslan Ponomariov, respectively. With Black, Svidler drew pretty easily in a Classical Ruy, and is in great shape to win the World Cup tomorrow needing only a draw with White. Ivanchuk had a tougher time of things, despite having the white pieces. Like Ponomariov yesterday, he made a poor opening choice and was soon forced to defend an inferior ending. In Ivanchuk's case, this meant being a pawn down in an ending where both sides had a bishop and knight ending, but thanks to the opposite-colored bishops he achieved the draw on move 82, after 52 moves' worth of suffering in that ending. Will his serves hold up for one more day, allowing him to take the final Candidates' spot? We'll see.
Meanwhile, check out the video coverage on the official site, or have a look at my comments to the games (or both).
Reader Comments (6)
I have a question about Grischuk-Svidler game. It follows from your notes that this was an easy draw for Black, and Grischuk played all the best, principled moves in the opening. Why then nobody plays this line in Ruy if it draws so comfortably, much more comfortably than Berlin which is played by everybody?
[DM: Starting from move 3, White has important alternatives on move 4 (4.0-0), 5 (5.0-0, 5.d3 and 5.Qe2, all of which - especially the first move - are more popular than 5.d4), 7 (7.cxd4), and 8 (8.Nxd4 and 8.cxd4). Further, Svidler had to break new ground with 8...Nxd6, as whether through fashion or fear practically everyone castled on move 8. Further still, as mentioned in the notes, 11.cxd4 may give White a small edge. Finally, while Black held without too much trouble from move 13 on, it's still a position where the burden is on him to draw. So while it was a pretty comfortable draw for Svidler, there are a few intervening steps between his achievement and a drawing line for all of us against the Ruy.]
In Grischuk - Svidler, the line 12.cxd4 Bb6 13.Ne5 Qb7 was mentioned by Grischuk in the press conference as something that he had considered and almost played, though within a different move order: 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Re1+ Be6 11.cxd4 Bb6 12.Bg5 Qc8 13.Ne5 Qb7 and here he thought at first that 14.Qf3, targeting both c6 and f7, is strong – but then realized that Black could reply with 14…Bxd4, where 15.Nxf7?? simply loses to 15…0-0. Btw, White can win the c6 pawn with 14.Qa4, but it seems that after 14…0-0 15.Nxc6 Rfe8, with ideas of Bd7 (an immediate 15…Bd7?? Loses to 16.Ne7+) or Nf5, h6 and Bd5, Black has at least full compensation.
As for the tendency to avoid 8…Nxd6 with Black, it probably has a lot to do with White’s option of playing Bg5 *before* Re1+, so that Black is forced to play f6, can’t defend against the check with Be6, and loses the right to castle (though engine analysis suggests that with accurate play it might not be as bad for Black as it looks). I wonder why Grischuk didn’t play like that.
[DM: It looks like a reasonable idea, but these guys didn't get to 2700 by being terrified of losing castling privileges! After 9.Bg5 f6 10.Re1+ Kf8 piece sacs look fishy, but after 11.Bxc6 bxc6 Black will soon play ...Kf7 (and then ...Rf8 or, more likely, ...Re8) without having to worry about White's light squared bishop.]
The "open" ruy lopez is also a very easy draw for black. Surprisingly no one plays this either.
[DM: Let's move on to other topics before this becomes one great big sarcasm-fest, please. No real opening variation is an "easy draw" for Black, though at times the Marshall, the Petroff and the Poisoned Pawn Najdorf have at least seemed pretty close. If there were such an infallible weapon, top GMs would flock to it straight away. That's not to say the Open Ruy isn't a perfectly good variation, which it is!
P.S. If you *do* have a forced draw ready to hand here, please let us all know, especially as I'll be covering that line soon in my ChessVideos series on the Ruy. I know there's the one long line in the 9.c3 system with Zaitsev's (not Tal's) 11.Ng5 where White ends up with a knight for two strong central passed pawns. Maybe that line is more or less worked out to a draw, but White doesn't have to play 11.Ng5 (or 9.Nbd2, for that matter).]
in the open ruy... black gets more space than white (true on the queenside there is not much behind that space, but it is also not weak), the piece placement is very active (more active than white), centralised and excellent and black has many excellent plans. (some wrong ones as well)
korchnoi and anand play this openning sometimes but ... they dont feel it correctly. They usually play an early d4 break and botch their position, rather than holding onto the great position and building up further before openning the game OR better yet, letting white open it at the cost of some tempos.
Sokolov has some good eg games....
Also watch how Polgar easily held Karajakin with the open ruy in the current world cup game. She played it perfectly...
Karjakin had to win... but couldnt even come close.
The Kasparov Anand lines they played in their PCA thing has also been worked out to a draw.... I think Ian Rogers shows that in one of his games nicely. I think it was against Naiditch (probably Naiditch thought ill spring this on him see if he knows it)
[DM: That Black drew a recent high-level game doesn't demonstrate that the opening is simply drawn - not even close. If it did, then there isn't a single opening that would be in business! As for Karjakin-Polgar, White has quite a few important deviations to choose from prior to 21.f4, which was a novelty. Even after that, 26.Qe1 may offer White an edge. It was a good game by Polgar, but it's just one more sentence in a very long book, and not the end of the book itself. Chess isn't that simple!
About the line from Naiditsch-Rogers, yes, that's what I was referring to in the previous comment, though the theory has developed since then. Note that it's in the ...d4 line that you strangely suggest shows that Korchnoi and Anand (in games that are all 16 years old or even older!) don't have a good feel for the opening. Obviously theory has developed since Anand's PCA match with Kasparov and all the more since Korchnoi was playing in world championship matches 30 and 33 years ago. But to say that they have a bad "feel" for the opening based on progress made after thousands of games and thousands more hours of computer work is absurd. (Incidentally, both Korchnoi and Anand have a better percentage with the Open Ruy than Polgar, and in their cases their opponents knew for many years that it was a regular part of their repertoires.)
I do agree with you that the Open Ruy is almost surely objectively drawn - and it's very likely that all other normal openings are drawn as well. But what's known to God or "known" to a hypothetical future 32-piece tablebase doesn't necessarily translate to what we can do!]
Yes Dennis I agree with you... when I say "its drawn"... of course Im exaggerating.
I mean not by force.. but that black has a very comfortable and easy game without much effort (as opposed to say a grunfeld, where one slip and its done for)
[DM: It may be conceptually simpler to play than the Gruenfeld, but statistically the two openings are roughly on a par. There are no "easy" openings.]