Thessaloniki Grand Prix, Round 1
The Grand Prix tournament in Thessaloniki got off to a good and lively start today, with three decisive games out of six and only one draw that so much as remotely resembled a non-event.
In fact, the quickest game was Peter Svidler's 27-move win over last-second sub Etienne Bacrot. Bacrot was only a little worse until 21...Ba3, and he could still fight until his 23rd move, ...Bc8?, which allowed Svidler to maintain the "blind pigs" on the 7th rank. Then it was just over.
The other two decisive games featured the participants from the U.S.A. Gata Kamsky had an advantage against Leinier Dominguez all game long, but putting his opponent away was another story. Had Dominguez played 44...Kd7 he would have kept chances to survive; instead, he committed a gross blunder with 44...Rxh4??, losing a piece to the simple tactic 45.Rxd6+ (45...exd6 46.Bf6+ and 47.Bxh4). My view is that if you're in Dominguez' situation, you just laugh, acknowledge your fallibility and forget about it.
The other U.S. participant, Hikaru Nakamura, lost what looks like a textbook-ready endgame to Rustam Kasimdzhanov. Kasimdzhanov won a pawn and reached a good knight vs. relatively ineffectual bishop ending after 43 moves, and skillfully used all his assets to break in with the knight. Black could have played on quite a while longer, but with the h-pawn dropping White's win is routine.
The other three games - Ponomariov-Caruana, Ivanchuk-Morozevich, and Topalov-Grischuk - were all drawn.
Round 2 Pairings:
- Grischuk - Nakamura
- Bacrot - Kasimdzhanov
- Morozevich - Svidler
- Caruana - Ivanchuk
- Dominguez - Ponomariov
- Topalov - Kamsky