World Cup, Post-Round 3 Update
Oof, what a round. The most dramatic result - and the most painful one for most U.S. fans - was the elimination of Fabiano Caruana against Rinat Jumabayev. Caruana drew the first classical game with Black without any difficulties, but went nuts in his white game with 27.g5? Bxf1? 28.Rxf1?, leaving him with no real compensation for the sacrificed material. Happily for Team America, Jumabayev erred with 32...Nf6, and Caruana made it to the time control with equality. Alas, Caruana's 41st move was a blunder (or if you think that only obvious errors can be blunders, it was a big mistake). Jumabayev took his time, figured it out, and took advantage.
This was not the only upset, however. Anish Giri, the fourth seed, was also bounced; in his case by Uzbek prodigy Nodirbek Abdusattorov. They drew their classical games, and then Abdusattorov won both tiebreak games to advance. In the first of those games Giri took what seemed to me unnecessary risks, perhaps trying too hard to create winning chances, but it wasn't fatal until he played 37.Re3 rather than 37.Kxg4. It's clear he missed the very nice shot 37...h5!, after which the game was as good as over. The point was that capturing on d3 would lose a piece to a knight fork, e.g. 38.Nxd3 Rxd3 39.Rxd3 h4+ and 40.Kxg4 Ne5+ or 40.Kg2 Ne1+. Giri had great chances to equalize the scores in the rematch, but kept letting his young opponent slip away. The last moment when Giri had a winning advantage was on move 37, when his decision to take on e4 let White off the hook. From then on the game should have been drawn, but as a draw was as good as a loss Giri took some extreme chances in the hopes of scaring up some winning chances, and Abdusattorov took advantage.
Still another top guy losing: Shakhriyar Mamedyarov lost to Haik Martirosyan. Martirosyan won the first classical game, but Shakh struck back to force tiebreaks. The Armenian kept his cool though, and won a long game with Black to regain the lead, and was never in trouble in game 4.
Not quite as dramatic, but still significant: Evgeny Tomashevsky lost to Pouya Idani, Jorden van Foreest lost to Kacper Piorun, David Navara lost to Vasif Durarbayli and Jorge Cori lost to Javokhir Sindarov. Yu Yangyi lost to Amin Tabatabaei (and the latter defeated Pentala Harikrishna in the first game of their fourth round match today).
Some near-misses, headlined by the one match that went to Armageddon: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs. David Paravyan. MVL had excellent chances to finish the match before the last stage, but despite getting a lot of good positions and huge advantages on the clock he had a terrible time finishing the Russian off. Finally, he did the job when he absolutely needed to, winning with White in Armageddon. Vidit Gujrathi barely escaped against Baskaran Adhiban in a dramatic match that almost reached the Armageddon stage, and Jeffery Xiong needed some good luck in game two against Nils Grandelius to send the match to tiebreaks, where he finished on top.
Other notable upsets include Baseem Amin's losing to Etienne Bacrot, Salem Saleh losing 2-0 to Ante Brkic, and Matthias Bluebaum's falling to Velmir Ivic.
"Only" 32 players left, with the following pairings, given in bracket order (with today's game 1 results given in parentheses [the player's name given means he won]):
Carlsen - Wojtaszek (draw)
Dubov - Esipenko (draw)
Ponkratov - Bacrot (Bacrot)
Piorun - Sindarov (Piorun)
Grischuk - Korobov (draw)
Idani - Duda (draw)
Gujrathi - Xiong (Gujrathi)
Durarbayli - Abdusattorov (Durarbayli)
Kovalev - Fedoseev (Fedoseev)
Ivic - Andreikin (draw)
Harikrishna - Tabatabaei (Tabatabaei)
Brkic - Martirosyan (Martirosyan)
Vachier-Lagrave - Pragnanandhaa (draw)
Artemiev - Karjakin (draw)
Vitiugov - Svidler (draw)
Shankland - Jumabayev (Shankland)
The top seeds remaining are Carlsen (#1, and who had been perfect until today), Grischuk (#5), MVL (#7), and Karjakin (#10). And that's it for the top 10! As for the poor U.S. of A., we're down to Xiong (#20, but lost his first game to #13 Gujrathi) and Shankland (#31, but won against #66 Jumabayev, who defeated Caruana). No Chinese players remain, but Russia still remembers how to dominate: they have 10 players left in the field.
Reader Comments (4)
"No Chinese players remain"
Yu Yangyi was the only Chinese player to start the World Cup.
Tan Zhongyi (who has not yet been eliminated) was the only Chinese player to start the Women's World Cup.
[DM: That is itself strange. Are they in some sort of special training camp that will push them all to 2900 status? What's happening here?]
Apparently Chinese players still face travel restrictions due to a pandemic in the rest of the world, Ding Liren and Wang Hao needed special permission to play the (second half of) the candidates.
The question is rather whether and then why (only) Yu Yangyi and Tan Zhongyi got special permission this time, or if they are living abroad.
The Covid-19 pandemic is very bad in Russia. In order to minimize the risks of returning players spreading Covid-19 in China, the Chinese authorities may have decided to have only minimal Chinese participation in this World Cup.
Tan Zhongyi lost to Alexandra Kosteniuk (the winner of the Women's World Cup) in the semifinals.
Tan Zhongyi then defeated Anna Muzychuk to win third place.