Shamkir, Round 6: Giri Joins the Winners' Club
Wednesday, April 25, 2018 at 1:52PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2018 Gashimov Memorial, Anish Giri

It may be impossible to repair the damage at this point (though an enterprising reader like Chuckles is welcome to work out for us how if at all a 10-way tie for first is still possible), now that Anish Giri has also won a game, at the expense of David Navara who is now at -2. Navara was never doing well on the black side of an Advance Caro-Kann, but apparently thought he had found an ingenious tactical solution to his problems when he played 23...Bc2.

If so, he was completely wrong. His move would work if after 24.Rxc2 Rxc2 25.Qxc2 Nd4 White would move the queen. Then Black would have at least equality, and against most moves he'd even be winning. But 26.b6 wins for White, and 25.b6 is even better. For that matter, 24.b6 is also excellent, and was the move chosen by Giri, after which Black's position was thoroughly and irrevocably lost.

Veselin Topalov led entering the round, and he still does, but he was unable to add to his lead. He found a small improvement on the white side of a Sveshnikov Sicilian, but Rauf Mamedov played well and obtained a typical kind of Sveshnikov draw with opposite-colored bishops.

The World Champion was content to play for a draw against Sergey Karjakin with the Marshall Gambit, and he achieved it easily enough. He followed a 2017 game of his against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave up until move 20, and seemed to have no problems after that. He's still half a point behind Topalov, and tied with Giri in second place.

Ding Liren enjoyed a small edge against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, but couldn't convert it into anything serious.

Finally, Teimour Radjabov and Radoslaw Wojtaszek contested a deeply theoretical Poisoned Pawn Variation (is there any other kind?), and followed email games practically to the very end. Wojtaszek passed the memory test, and the game was drawn.

Here are the games (with some comments). Round 7, tomorrow, looks like this:

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