Grenke, Aeroflot and Jurmala: The Events Multiply (Updated)
Friday, February 15, 2013 at 10:33PM
Dennis Monokroussos in Aeroflot 2013, Grenke Chess Classic 2013

1. To no one's surprise, round 8 of the Grenke Chess Classic followed the usual script: one decisive game, and it belonged to Arkadij Naiditsch. Again he played brilliantly...but unfortunately, only up to a point. He was winning against Fabiano Caruana, but the latter somehow slipped out and went on to win the game. One critical moment came on move 28, when Naiditsch played 28.Nxf6????? (his punctuation!); instead, the very obvious 28.c3 (my instant thought playing over the game later at bullet speed) would have maintained a winning advantage. Naiditsch of course saw it as well and intended to play it, but somehow managed to talk himself out of it. A pity.

In the other games, Viswanathan Anand was starting to make headway against Georg Meier, but the latter managed to get serious counterplay with his h-pawn; enough so that it was finally Anand who had to save the game. Finally, Daniel Fridman stopped his slide with a draw against Michael Adams.

Round 9 pairings, with player scores in parentheses:

2. Next, Aeroflot. The 32 qualifiers from the Open were pared down to eight, and they will join the eight invitees. (Seven were listed in my earlier post on the tournament; the eighth is Anatoly Karpov.) The eight surviving qualifiers are Gata Kamsky, Anton Korobov, Le Quang Liem, Pavel Eljanov, Rauf Mamedov, Sanan Sjugirov, Dmitry Frolyanov and Aleksandr Shimanov.

UPDATE: Here are the pairings for the round of 16 (HT: Chess Today):

 

 

3. Finally, there is another quick rapid event (redundant, but because the traditional rapid time control was 25 minutes per game [generally with a 10 second increment] and this event has a 15' + 6" control, the odd adjective seems to fit) in Jurmala, Latvia, memorializing Vladimir Petrov. (Or rather, Vladimirs Petrovs. Petrovs was a talented master killed by the Soviet regime for criticizing the effect of their annexation on living conditions in his native Latvia.)

About the event: it's a 14-round Swiss that started Friday and will continue through the weekend. After the first day's four rounds, there are two players with perfect scores: Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Vassily Ivanchuk; Sergei Zhigalko, Kamil Dragun and Boris Grachev are half a point behind. 21 players have 3 points, including Latvians Alexei Shirov, Arturs Neiksans, Arturs Bernotas, Evgeny Sveshnikov, Lauris Laimins, Normunds Miezis, Egons Lavendelis and Georgijs Makovskis.

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