World Cup 2015: Round 6 (Semifinals), Day 2: Svidler Goes to the Finals, Eljanov and Karjakin to Tiebreaks
And then there were three. Having defeated Anish Giri with Black the day before, Peter Svidler needed only a draw to advance to the finals of the 2015 World Cup, and thereby qualify for his third straight Candidates' tournament - a very impressive feat! A draw he needed, and a draw he received. Giri played a very interesting opening for a must-win game: the Caro-Kann! At first this seemed like a crazy idea, but upon reflection it does have one virtue, and it's that it generally results in at least slightly asymmetrical pawn structures. One can meet the French with the Exchange Variation, there are plenty of ways to create flat positions in the Open Games and the Sicilian is chock full of forced draws, if White wants them. With the Caro-Kann Black isn't going to create fire on the board, but there isn't any obvious way for White to kill the game either.
Svidler is a clever fellow, however, and he figured out a way to reach the kind of insipid and symmetrical pawn structure that would practically guarantee the draw: the Classical line with 6.Nh3! It promises White absolutely nothing, but the bad news is that the path to equality runs through 6...Nf6 7.Nf4 e5. After 8.dxe5 Qa5+ 9.c3 Qxe5 10.Qe2 White gets symmetry, a queen trade and even the bishop pair. Giri was never in the least trouble, but he couldn't cause much either, and after 51 moves Giri offered the draw that ended the match. The good news for Giri is that he's in good shape to qualify for the Candidates' by rating anyway, so his ouster probably won't be too big a blow for the ambitious youngster.
The other game was rather surprising. After suffering for 77 moves with Black before ekeing out a draw against Pavel Eljanov, you'd think that Sergey Karjakin would return the favor. It didn't happen. Karjakin came up with an interesting novelty in an English Four Knights with 4.g3 Bb4, but just two moves later thought for half an hour and offered a draw. Very strange, but Karjakin did something similar in the quarter-finals against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. We'll see in the tiebreaks whether this was some sort of energy conservation strategy or not.
Today's (yesterday's) games are here, with my brief comments.
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