And so we're down to the final four at the 2015 World Cup, with two slots available for the finalists to reach next year's Candidates' tournament. Two of the semi-finalists were determined yesterday, when Pavel Eljanov drew with Hikaru Nakamura to seal a 1.5-.5 match victory and Anish Giri beat Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to win by the same score. The other two matches, between Peter Svidler and Wei Yi and between Sergey Karjakin and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, both saw a pair of draws in the classical games and went on to tiebreaks today.
Both matches began with a further pair of draws in the 25'+10" tiebreaks. Svidler had Wei Yi on the ropes in both games, as the young Chinese star could barely get out of the opening with a decent position, even with White. But somehow he kept defending and doing it well, and he slipped out by a hair to make it to the 10'+ 10" games. The games between Karjakin and Mamedyarov were more balanced. In both of the 25-minute games the player with White had a brief stretch where his edge was creeping into dangerous territory, but in both cases gravity set in and the result was a relatively comfortable draw.
Both matches finished after a pair of 10-minute games. Continuing where they left off all match, only more so, Svidler was winning with White after just 13 moves against Wei Yi, but once again let the advantage slip away. In fact, Wei Yi even enjoyed some slight winning chances later on, with two extra pawns, but it seems that White could probably maintain a fortress in the ending with rooks and opposite-colored bishops. What is clear is that Wei Yi's chances to win slipped away fairly quickly, and the game was drawn.
It often happens that when a player misses chance after chance his opponent finally gets a chance of his own and takes it, and it looked like that story would repeat itself here. Playing 1.b3, of all things, We Yi finally got a good position out of the opening, and Svidler was in danger of landing in a prospectless position where his opponent could grind away with two bishops against two knights (with rooks and pawns). Svidler found a good idea, to play 24...Ra6 and 25...Rb6, and Wei Yi reacted quite badly. His last chance to keep an edge - and to not be worse - came on move 27, when 27.Rc3 or 27.b4 would keep some pull. After 27.Qxe6 fxe6 28.b4 the pawn sac wasn't so promising. He was't losing for a long time, but now it was Svidler who could grind away. The combination of Wei Yi's time trouble and Svidler's king raid up the e- and d-files put White over the edge, and Svidler won the game and the match.
In the Karjakin-Mamedyarov match, Karjakin won the first g/10 somewhat strangely. He came out of the opening with an overwhelming position, but somehow managed to botch things a bit. Mamedyarov was always worse, a pawn down with the worse position, but by the end he had reached a double rook ending a pawn down, and with fair hopes of reaching a single rook ending with all the pawns on the kingside (four vs. three). Working out the details...he lost on time. In the sequel, Mamedyarov fought for a long time on the white side of a blocked-up Nimzo-Indian position. He never had anything concrete, but he could try forever without any risk, and did so. Karjakin defended well enough, but the pressure continued as the game went past move 80. The battle finally came to an abrupt end after 85.Bd1? Nd3?! 86.Reh2??, blundering at least a piece to the simple 86...Rxh5. If 87.Kxh5, 87...Rh8+ wins the remaining white rook with a skewer, while Mamedyarov's 87.Rxh5 lost the bishop to the knight fork 87...Nf2+. So Mamedyarov resigned, and the hopes of the host country for a Candidate came to an end for this cycle. (Unless they host the Candidates' tournament next year and give a spot to Mamedyarov or Radjabov.)
Tomorrow is at last a rest day, and on Sunday the semi-finals begin. The pairings are Giri vs. Svidler and Eljanov vs. Karjakin. Oddly enough, the first match features two players who were born in Russia and the latter two who were born in Ukraine, but in each case one of the players now represents another country. (It's not just the U.S. that lures away or inherits other countries' players!)
A couple of asides. A few days ago I mentioned the at least apparent tension between the commentators, Evgeny Miroshnichenko and Emil Sutovsky, with most of the overt agitation coming from "Miro". Sutovsky left a few days back for another commitment, and not the slightest trace of sarcasm or irritability has been seen since then. To my mind this is good - the story should be the participants and their chess, not the commentators, but others will disagree.
Aside #2: FIDE takes out a hefty 20% tax from each participant's prizes. Why? Beats the heck out of me; my guess is that they do it because they can. To the organizers' great credit, they are footing that bill on the players' behalf, which is a very generous action on their part. To all accounts, the organizers deserve great credit: it's an attractive venue, the players have been well-treated, notably including the Armenian participants, and this is another fine gesture on their part. Well done, and hopefully next year's chess olympiad in Baku will go just as smoothly.