We soldier on, despite the absence of readers submitting groans at our Geneva Convention pun in the last post. Very disappointing. (Maybe such word plays were prohibited by that Convention as cruel and unusual punishment? Sorry.*)
Starting with Danzhou, when we left off after round 3 there were only two players who had a win to their names: Wei Yi, who had won two games, and Ding Liren, who had won one. They played in round 4 and drew, but Wei Yi was in some trouble for a few moves after playing 29...Bf6(?) rather than 29...Ne4. Keeping both pairs of rooks with 33.Re7 was more promising, aiming to set up the "blind pigs" (doubled rooks on the 7th rank, for those unfamiliar with that expression). Instead, Ding played 33.Re3, and Black played well to hold the single rook ending.
Others took up the slack for them. Yu Yangyi, the second-highest rated Chinese player (after Ding Liren) at the start of the tournament (but see below) defeated bottom seed and tournament rabbit Lu Shanglei, while Le Quang Liem defeated Vladimir Malakhov. That left the day's winners tied for second with Ding, half a point behind Wei, but round 5 restored the previous pattern.
Wei Yi guaranteed that he would remain in clear first for another round by defeating Yu Yangyi, and in the process he leapfrogged his opponent on the rating list. (He is now #14 on the list, at 2751.8.) The game itself is a treat, with Wei either uncorking some remarkable preparation or even more impressive over-the-board inspiration against his opponent's Petroff. (Most likely a combination of the two.) Black rose to the challenge until move 21, when he finally stumbled into one of White's many tactical tricks. 21...Be6 would have held the balance, but the natural 21...Bf5 ran into a nice trick: 22.Rh5! Unfortunately for White, that was only the second-best move. First playing 22.Bxf5 and only then (after 22...Qxf5) 23.Rh5! would have been even stronger. Still, White enjoyed an advantage, and with persistence and good technique Wei was able to break down Yu's resistance in the queen vs. rook and bishop ending that soon ensued.
Ding Liren also did his job, defeating Ruslan Ponomariov with Black in a Nimzo-Indian. Ponomariov got in trouble in the opening, but avoided the worst when Ding grabbed the exchange after 18.f4 rather than maintaining the bind with 18...Nd3. Ponomariov was known as a great technician even in his teenage days (he was seen as a sort of second coming of Karpov in the late '90s and early '00s, in the years before, during, and just after he won the FIDE World Championship at the ripe young age of 18), but it was his opponent who showed better technique in this game. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good, and while we're on the subject of ratings Ding Liren jumped over Anand to reach 9th on the rating list.
Over to Geneva (which Agon/World Chess is doing their best to publicize by putting everything but the live moves behind a paywall until the round is over). When we left off after round 5, early leader Teimour Radjabov had just been caught by Alexander Grischuk, and they played in round 6. (The event is a swiss.) They played in round 6, and while Grischuk pressed throughout with White he never came close to getting anything serious, and it finished in a draw.
That allowed Pentala Harikrishna to make it a triumvirate at the top, when he defeated Levon Aronian with Black - impressive! That said, Aronian was better until he played 20.f4? (instead of 20.e3, which was a better way of neutralizing Black's own dreams of playing ...f4), and after the further error 22.e3? (too late!) Black took over in impressive style after the alert 22...Ne5! Ironically, Harikrishna soon achieved ...f4 despite White's best efforts, and when it came it was much stronger than it would have been had he allowed it on move 22.
The day's other wins were on the lower boards. Nepomniachtchi defeated Inarkiev, Li Chao beat Eljanov, Riazantsev beat Rapport (with Black against the latter's favorite 1.b3), and Hou Yifan bounced back out of the cellar by defeating Salem (also with Black).
In round 7, the game Harikrishna-Grischuk was drawn fairly quickly. It looked like it would be a thriller - a 6.h3 Najdorf that turned into a sort of Keres Attack-like position. The players castled on opposite sides and the race was on...until Harikrishna pulled the plug with 17.Bxc5 dxc5 18.Qxd8. Too bad - it could have been a spectacular game.
Radjabov played more ambitiously, albeit in a slow-motion way against Peter Svidler. In his heyday, Ulf Andersson had some success with the Anti-Gruenfeld system 1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 g6 3.Nf3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.e4 Nxc3 6.dxc3 Qxd1+ 7.Kxd1, most notably in his 1979 game with Marcelo Tempone, when Black played 7...c5. Against Svidler, Radjabov managed to achieve the same structure (and in fact, Andersson also used to play this way as well), and while Black has generally managed to draw in this variation it's not a particularly pleasant ending. Svidler was in trouble very soon, and the ending was amusing in a way. Radjabov had been tacking back and forth between attacks on Black's isolated a- and c-pawns. When the final blow came, it was on the b-file.
In the day's other decisive battles, Alexander Riazantsev won a long game against Li Chao on the white side of a Schlechter Slav. The game was "drawn" for a very long time, but just because an ending is drawn by the tablebase doesn't mean it can be saved over the board by flesh and blood players. Li Chao's 71st move lost the game, but it's not exactly obvious at a glance that it loses while 71...Ke3 and 71...Kd4 draw. Finally, Saleh lost again, this time to Eljanov in a Modern Benoni.
With two rounds to go, Radjabov leads with 5/7; Harikrishna and Grischuk are half a point behind, and Mamedyarov, Nepomniachtchi, and Riazantsev each have four points.
* Not sorry.
Tuesday, July 18, 2017 at 1:11AM