The 2012 Aeroflot Open is Underway
The Aeroflot Open in Moscow is one of the strongest open tournaments every year, if not the strongest, and it comes with the added prize of sending the winner into the Dortmund super-tournament later in the year. The young Vietnamese grandmaster Le Quang Liem has won Aeroflot the past two years and is playing again (I hope Dortmund invites him back in any case - he has played very well the past two years, taking second to Ponomariov in 2010 and second to Kramnik in 2011). Other elite GMs in the hunt are Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Evgeny Tomashevsky, and the 86-player field (for the A-section) includes 79 grandmasters in all.
It's a nine-round event that started on Tuesday and continues through Wednesday, February 15. After two rounds there are five players with perfect scores: Evgeny Alekseev, Denis Khismatullin, Sergei Zhigalko, Abhijeet Gupta and Maxim Rodshtein.
Reader Comments (7)
Just hope the cold doesn't affect their play too badly- Moscow temperature forecast to hit -20C over the next couple of days...
[DM: A "crisp" day.]
You forgot to mention GM Robson, the only USA player!
[DM: I wish him well, but I didn't "forget".]
This event seems to produce some exciting chess and for a really nice piece of pyrotechnics the game won by Ray Robson today takes some beating. The Nc6 shot to allow the queen to get to g5 is one I have seen before but very attractive all the same. The progress on Robson and Hess should be a real boost to US chess.
[DM: If Hess stays in chess, that is!]
Nice to see Robson is playing. Tough tourney, but good luck to him.
I am a Vallejo-Pons fan, and followed with interest his game against Sokolov. I have tried analyzing the game, but I just find it too complicated. I have briefly looked at the computer to make sure I was not missing something obvious, and it did show me various gaps in my tactics, but at least to me they were not obvious. I found it really exciting, and I am still unsure about the end position. Seems to me that it *may* be taken to a R+N vs. R ending that could be drawn. Without wishing to take too much of your time, do you have any comments on it?
[DM: I can't argue with "may". I doubt it would happen, but it's not logically impossible and stranger things have happened. But even if the queens come off sometime after 41...R6/8xf7 42.Bxf7 Rxf7, it's not a trivial task for White to eliminate Black's remaining pawns (especially the g-pawn) and I'd expect Black to win. (Note that White can't play 43.Qxa5?? on account of 43..Qd1+ 44.Kh2 Ng4+ when White must play the hopeless 45.Rxg4 as the alternative is a quick forced mate.) I'm assuming that Vallejo didn't resign but lost on time, given that the game score ends with his 41.Rg3.]
Thanks, Dennis. I had noticed that Qxa5 is not possible, as you suggest. I do agree that it would not be easy, and I guess from the practical point of view, it makes sense to resign on that position, as it will most likely end as a loss anyway. Thus, resigning after the time control doesn't waste energy unnecesarily. It is a tough tournament, after all, and every bit of rest counts.
It's rather unlikely that Vallejo lost on time on move 41, one move after the time control. Clock times on Chessbomb are 47 minutes for Vallejo vs. 50 minutes for Sokolov - as the players got 50 extra minutes after move 40 they were probably in dire time trouble before (which would explain their sub-optimal moves before the time control). I presume that Vallejo played the automatic 41.Rg3 and then considered his position hopeless at least against such an opponent - no point to continue with long and most likely futile resistance, five more rounds to play without a single rest day.