World Cup 2011: Round 5, Day 1: Three Easy Draws and an Ivanchuk Victory
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 10:17AM
Dennis Monokroussos in Ivanchuk, World Cup 2011

Yesterday there were only three draws out of 20 games, today it only took four games to produce the same quantity. Two of them (Svidler-Polgar and Ponomariov-Gashimov) were so short that one suspects the players just wanted a day off. (Or maybe two days off - let's see what happens tomorrow.) The third (Grischuk-Navara) was also short by conventional standards, but while it wasn't exactly a bloodbath it continued to the point where the draw was clearly the appropriate result for purely chess reasons.

The remaining game was more in keeping with the tournament ethos to date. Ivanchuk met Radjabov's Dragon Sicilian with the Fianchetto Variation, and put on a positional squeeze. After his 27th move Ivanchuk stood a little better, and now Radjabov played 27...g5.

It's a thematic move, fighting for control over the dark squares. It does look a little suspicious, weakening Black's grip on f5 and the light squares in general, but as Fischer famously noted you've gotta give squares to get squares. Still, there is a problem with Radjabov's move - can you find it? Ivanchuk did, and won convincingly.

You can replay that game (and the rest) with my comments, here, while the event site (with video commentary) is here.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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