Sinquefield Cup 2015, Round 1: Five Wins!
The first round of this year's Sinquefield Cup was remarkable, with all five games finishing with a winner - generally in brutal fashion!
The biggest game featured world champion and #1 player Magnus Carlsen taking on world co-number 2 Veselin Topalov with the white pieces. Carlsen wanted something solid, but Topalov was well-prepared with a shocking novelty on move 7 that created plenty of chaos on the board. Carlsen went for an ill-advised piece sacrifice a few moves later, and despite a brief moment when he was doing alright most of the game was dominated by Topalov. Both players were in some time trouble - especially Carlsen - and once they made the time control at move 40 it was time for the world champion to resign.
The other #2 player, Viswanathan Anand, didn't fare as well. He had Black against Hikaru Nakamura, and although White got nearly nothing from the opening or the early middlegame, the game kept going and Anand blundered near the end of the time control and lost first one pawn and then a second. Very shortly after the time control, he resigned as well, bringing his career score against Nakamura to +1 -5 in decisive classical games.
That's the good news for the USA; the rest was bad news. Last year it took nine rounds before Fabiano Caruana gave up a point to the field - in total. This year it took just one round. Levon Aronian defeated him in good style and could have won a classical brilliancy prize game if Caruana had cooperated a little. Caruana was well-prepared, but his aggressive setup with Black was extremely dangerous. Aronian did a better job of maintaining the tension, and when Caruana slipped it was fatal.
The third American, Wesley So, lost a strange game to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. He played a very greedy line, spending a lot of time to win a pawn. It turns out that this line had been played before in a number of GM games, with some success, but those games were quite some time ago and White's play does not receive the engine's nihil obstat, let alone its imprimatur. MVL improved on an old game of Anatoly Karpov's (and frankly, the Karpov game was reason enough for White to play something different) and won very smoothly.
Finally, Anish Giri outplayed Alexander Grischuk quite convincingly in a Catalan/Queen's Indian hybrid, but Grischuk's preparation was almost as strange as So's. The players followed a 2009 game between Anand and Peter Leko until Giri's 19th move novelty. Once he played this move, which the engine recommends almost before you turn it on, it was clear that White had a significant advantage. The only question at that point was whether Black's position was terribly or only bad. Soon it was terrible and then catastrophic, and Grischuk was unable to make it to the time control before resigning.
The games, with my comments, are here. The round 2 pairings are as follows:
- Grischuk - Anand
- Topalov - Nakamura
- Caruana - Carlsen
- Vachier-Lagrave - Aronian
- Giri - So
Reader Comments (2)
"Grischuk's preparation was ... strange."
I wonder if it was preparation: he had already spent an hour before Giri's novelty. Nearly 13 minutes for 12.-dxc4, 14 1/2 minutes for 13.-Nh5, 20 minutes for 15.-b5 (then another 28 minutes for 19.-Nb6). Seems a lot to just remember what he had prepared, obviously it is vintage Grischuk.
[DM: Yes, but consult your database. White's 12th move is the main move by an overwhelming percentage. If Grischuk wasn't prepared for that then what is he doing in the opening? This isn't some backwater of theory; it's a position that arises frequently via both Catalan and Queen's Indian move orders.]
Maybe "Grischuk's LACK OF preparation was ... strange" would be more accurate!?
[DM: I'll go along with you on that one. Concord has been reached!]