Sao Paulo/Bilbao 2011, Round 3: Ivanchuk Leads, Carlsen Cracks
Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 12:41AM As usual, Francisco Vallejo Pons was involved in a decisive game, and most of the way he was following the script. He lost his first two games and was well on the way to losing a third game, but a funny thing happened on the way to the finish. Magnus Carlsen had plenty of time - at least for a while - to find a win, but didn't manage. Vallejo had just about equalized when Carlsen uncorked an amazing blunder - a two-mover - and soon had to resign. Thanks to the 3-1-0 scoring system the win leapfrogged Vallejo out of the cellar, where Carlsen now resides! (Not for long, I expect.)
More remarkable still, Carlsen has company there: the world champion. In this case, however, it was a more normal loss, albeit with White. Vassily Ivanchuk played the Schliemann (aka Jaenisch) against Anand's Ruy Lopez, and equalized without any obvious difficult against Anand's non-topical variation. Ivanchuk was doing well, and when Anand sacrificed (blundered?) a pawn for play the Ukranian was able to cool off his opponent's initiative and squeeze out the point in 69 moves. Ivanchuk is the clear leader with 2.5/3 (or rather, 7/9), and on the live rating list he's up to #5 in the world. (Incidentally, Aronian is within .3 of Anand for second, and isn't that far from Carlsen, either.)
Finally, Hikaru Nakamura played a Kamsky opening Kamskyishly and achieved a pretty comfortable draw with Black against Aronian.
Standings After Round 3 (3-1-0 scoring first, normal scoring in parentheses):
1. Ivanchuk 7 (2.5)
2. Aronian 5 (2)
3-4. Nakamura, Vallejo 3 (Nakamura 1.5, Vallejo 1)
5-6. Anand, Carlsen 2 (1)
Round 4 Pairings (for Friday; Thursday's a rest day)
- Aronian - Ivanchuk
- Vallejo - Anand
- Carlsen - Nakamura
Carlsen, Ivanchuk, Vallejo in Sao Paulo/Bilbao 2011
Reader Comments (2)
Chucky was obviously inspired by some recent Schliemann (aka Jaenisch) videos on the Web! Anand missed those episodes and paid for it!
I am sure Anand nearly fell off his chair when he saw 3. ... f5. I wonder why he went for the 4. d3. It would be interesting to see his comments on the game. I wonder what Chucky had prepared if Anand had played 4. Nc3.
It would be interesting to see what the psychological impact of an opening is. If someone plays the Jaenisch against me I immediately feel more confident which may be a good thing or a bad thing. If you don't like playing against the a particular opening do you automatically play worse chess when faced with it? The best practical advice I ever got on openings was play the openings you least like playing against.
[DM: The thing to do is to arrange your repertoire so you don't play against variations you dislike! As for Anand "falling off his chair"...it's not happening. First, because Ivanchuk is known to play practically anything and everything, but also because the Schliemann has been a regular guest in top level play the last five years. Radjabov has played it at least 16 times since 2006 (once against Anand), Aronian at least eight, and Carlsen even tried it once - against Anand. So Anand had better not be surprised by it by now; if he is, he's a fool. (And he's not!)]
Some perspective on Carlsen missing the winning 26…Rd3: “I felt was close to winning. Having a big lead on the clock as well, I tried to figure out a forced win with 26 Rd3. The win was there, but I didn't manage to calculate it to the end” (from his blog - http://www.arcticsec.no/index.php?button=blog).
I suspect that the stuff which was really tough to “calculate to the end” was not so much the lines with 27.Ne3 and 27.Qc2, but rather the line where White goes for counter-attack with 27.Qxc7 Rxd1 28.Qb8+ Bf8 29.Rc8 Qxf2 30.Rxf8+ Kg7 31.Rd8(!) and here Black has two main options:
31...Qg1+ 32.Kg3 Qe3+ 33.Kh2 Re1! 34.Qe5+ Kh6 35.Qf6 Qg1+ 36.Kg3 Re3+ 37.Kf4 Qf2+ 38.Ke5 Rxe4+! (starting from 32...Qe3+, all of Black’s moves are only moves for the win)
31...Rg1 32.Rg8+ Kh6 33.Qf8+ Kh5 34.Rxg6! hxg6 35.Qh8+ and there seems to be only one way to avoid perpetual: 35...Kg5 36.Qe5+ f5 37.Qe7+ Kf4 38.Qd6+ Kxe4 39.Qc6+ Ke5 40.Qc7+ (43.Qc3+ Qd4!) 40...Kd5 41.Qf7+ Ke4! 42.Qc4+ Qd4! 43.Qxd4+ Kxd4 44.Kxg1 a4! And Black wins the pawn endgame despite being temporarily a pawn down. Alternatively, there’s 33...Kg5 34.Qe7+ Kh5 35.Qe5+ f5 36.Rxg6 Re1!! which looks even crazier.
Btw, another tempting option to consider was 26...Bh6, as 27.Rb1 loses to 27...Bf4+ 28.g3 Rxg3! and mate following shortly; however, White can hold on with 27.Qc2! attacking the black rook and defending against the above mate threat (now after 27...Bf4+ 28.g3 Rxg3 29.fxg3 Qxg3+ 30.Kh1, h2 is covered).
A lot to think about with about 11 minutes on the clock...
[DM: Indeed, though it's also not clear that White will find everything either. Nice analysis, thank you!]