The Daily Roundup: Vachier-Lagrave and Svidler Lead Their Events Going Into The Final Day
Biel: On Tuesday all three games were drawn, but on Wednesday White went 3-0. This was highly significant to the race for first, because Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who had been a convincing leader throughout, was finally defeated while his closest rivals both won their games. Vachier-Lagrave lost to the hitherto winless Anish Giri, who played very well if not perfectly to keep some drama in the tournament. Radoslaw Wojtaszek won a nice game against Pentala Harikrishna, while Hou Yifan capitalized on a serious error by Alexander Motylev, and in the process brought her rating to a very impressive 2665. (Just 11 points south of Judit Polgar!) Both Wojtaszek and Hou are within half a point of Vachier-Lagrave, but as both have Black in the last round (in Wojtaszek's case, Black against Vachier-Lagrave himself) the Frenchman is still a big favorite to finish in clear first.
Gelfand-Svidler Rapid Match: Boris Gelfand won quickly in game 5, with the black pieces, no less, but then promptly lost the rematch to end the day as he started it: a point behind his opponent. The last two games will be played today.
N.B.: ChessBase has nice reports on both Biel and the rapid match that are worth checking out, with plenty of videos.
Reader Comments (3)
Giri certainly isn't/wasn't winless, but now has a perfect 50% or 33% score of +3=3-3. Whatever happens in the final round, the symmetry will be gone (and compare this to Giri's +2=9 in Wijk aan Zee).
Just a small correction: Giri was not winless until yesterday. In fact, this was his third win of the tournament.
Wasn't Giri's win v. Lagrave his 3rd win of the event? Back to even, and far from winless!