Wijk aan Zee, Round 8
Tuesday's round(s) at Wijk aan Zee were remarkable. Combining the two tournaments, there were 13 games in total, three of which ended in a draw, while the other 10 games were all won by White.
In the Masters Group (Group A, in the old parlance) the only draw was in the game Anish Giri - Levon Aronian. Giri had the leader under some pressure, but Aronian's play in the rook ending was a model of active defense, and he made the draw look easy.
In the meantime, the chase pack made up some ground. Sergey Karjakin defeated Boris Gelfand in a 6.h3 Najdorf, outplaying him a bit at a time. Karjakin's technique in the rook ending reminds one of an old joke: How does one make a small fortune in the restaurant business? Answer: Start with a large fortune and get out before you lose it all. Karjakin started with an advantage a weak club player should manage to convert and finally won by a single tempo.
Giri remains a point behind Aronian, and he's joined there by Leinier Dominguez and Fabiano Caruana. Dominguez slaughtered Wesley So in a 5.Nc3 Petroff, while Caruana took advantage of yet another somewhat eccentric opening by Richard Rapport. Rapport's opening experiments have contributed to the entertainment value of the tournament and he has had some successes, but his play in an offbeat French was more of a miss.
Further down the tournament table, Penteala Harikrishna knocked out Hikaru Nakamura in a Moscow Sicilian that turned into a Breyer Ruy Lopez (without h2-h3). White had an extra but backward pawn on the queenside, but when he turned his attention to the kingside Nakamura either lost all sense of danger or else missed a tactic. The result was that two moves after initiating the attack, Harikrishna was completely won, and Nakamura resigned three moves later. Finally, Loek van Wely won his second straight game and made it back to 50%. His victim was tailender Arkadij Naiditsch, who completely lost the thread of the game after a somewhat questionable exchange sacrifice by the Dutchman.
Here are the pairings for round 9, with player scores in parentheses:
- Rapport (3) - Giri (5)
- Nakamura (3) - Caruana (5)
- Naiditsch (1.5) - Harikrishna (4)
- So (4) - van Wely (4)
- Gelfand (2) - Dominguez (5)
- Aronian (6) - Karjakin (5.5)
Tournament site here; the games, with my notes, are here.
In the Challengers tournament, Baadur Jobava finally lost a game, to Sabino Brunello, which allowed Ivan Saric to leapfrog him into first place with a win over the slumping Radoslaw Wojtaszek. Weirdly, Anna Muzychuk, who was in a very competitive third place, wasted a white game by playing the same line against the Zaitsev Ruy Lopez used by Viswanathan Anand against Mickey Adams in San Luis 2005. It's one thing for you or me to play a move from 8-9 years ago against someone at the club, but this was a super-famous and very important game in the Zaitsev, something any decent professional would remember (and Muzychuk was playing Zhao Xue, who is a GM and an excellent theoretician). Also of note in the round: Jan Timman beat Jan-Krzysztof Duda to catch Muzychuk in a tie for third, while the young Dutch player Benjamin Bok achieved his final GM norm.
After 9 rounds (of 13) Saric led with 7 points, half a point ahead of Jobava and a point ahead of Muzychuk and Timman.
In round 10, played while the top group rested, Muzychuk-Saric was drawn, Jobava beat Bok (after a dubious sacrifice was declined by the new GM-elect), and Timman defeated tailender Etienne Goudriaan. The current standings at the top now look like this:
- 1-2. Saric, Jobava 7.5/10
- 3. Timman 7
- 4. Muzychuk 6.5
Reader Comments (3)
I'd just like to add that the questionable exchange sacrifice Van Wely played against Naiditsch, was by Van Wely's own admission a blunder, and he was lucky to get a pawn in return and a decent-ish position.
Has anyone else noticed that Aronian is currently scoring way better against the 2750+ club than the <2750 club? He seems to be targeting the top players, with wins against Nak, Karjakin and Caruana. Remarkable!
@Jonathan: It may rather be a matter of color distribution than 'targeting the top players'. Aronian scored 4/4 with white (against the players you mention and Wesley So) and "just" 3/5 with black (draws against Harikrishna, Rapport, Giri and former to current 2750+ player Gelfand). The exception was Aronian's win with black against Naiditsch, who more or less forced Aronian to play for a win - Aronian's own modest comment after that game: "I won't say it was my achievement, it was more mistakes of my opponent that allowed me to win".