A Brief Recap of the Top Players in Round 5 at the European Club Cup
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 5:19PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2018 European Club Cup

Peter Svidler is having the time of his life - the bad time of his life. He lost his fourth straight game, three of which have been with White, and once again it was with a blunder. He was winning against Christian Bauer, three pawns up. Bauer did have some pressure against Svidler's kingside; enough to give him practical chances though not enough to make up for the missing material. Svidler's 40th move was fine, though it encouraged further trouble. A move like 40.h4, returning one of the pawns to close up the avenues to his king would have been a good idea. A move later, however, his 41.Bc3 didn't just make things more complicated; it lost. (41.Qb1 maintained a winning advantage.) Or rather, it gave him a losing position after Bauer's 41...Nd3! There was still some fight in the position in case of 42.Qc4, but Svidler's 42.Kh1 led to a forced mate, and he resigned after 42...Nf3 43.h4 Nxh4. The poor guy must feel bad for his team, and the loss of 25 rating points must hurt as well.

As for the 2800 club, two of them faced off. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov had White against Magnus Carlsen. The game was equal throughout and finished in a quick draw. Mamedyarov's position looked more pleasant at the end, but there was no way to make progress. Ding Liren also drew quickly - in fact, both his game and Mamedyarov-Carlsen were drawn in 30 moves. He had Black against his countryman Wang Hao, another rented European for the week. (At least China is part of the same land mass containing Europe. Another team is borrowing a couple of low-rated players from the U.S. and Canada.)

As for the other super-GMs, none but Svidler were harmed in the making of today's film, so I'll leave you with a link to the three aforementioned games.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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