Month: September 2015

The Round 4.1 of the FIDE World Cup 2015 turned out to be a round of exciting top-level chess with Mamedyarov, in particular, hogging the limelight for his dashing victory over Caruana.

Mamedyarov-Caruana
The game took off quite interestingly with Mamedyarov sidestepping Caruana’s King’s Indian/Grunfeld with 3.Bg5. Soon, a complex battle ensued, with the position resembling a King’s Indian of sorts, albeit with black’s f-pawn missing. However, Caruana misplayed the position by allowing a further weakening of the Kingside which helped Mamedyarov launch a dangerous offensive on Caruana’s King. The American GM failed to keep Mamedyarov’s pieces at bay and went on to resign on move 39. A superb victory for the local hero!

Svidler-Topalov
In the currently topical 3…Nd7 line in the Moscow Variation against the Sicilian, Topalov opted for a Hedgehog setup. However, Svidler simply occupied a lot of space and Topalov’s position lacked breathing space for his pieces. The Bulgarian GM made desperate attempts to get back into the game, but Svidler’s energetic play denied any real chances to the former. As a result, the game ended in a convincing victory for Svidler on move 65.

Meanwhile, Nakamura outplayed Adams while Ding Liren overcame Wei Yi in a ‘back-and-forth’ game. The rest of the games ended peacefully.

The FIDE World Cup 2015 witnessed its third Armageddon game in as many rounds, and this time, it was the match-up between Nakamura and Nepomniachtchi that went down to the wire.

Nakamura-Nepomiachtchi
After a string of back and forth results in the rapid and blitz playoffs, Nakamura, playing with the black pieces, prevailed over Nepomniachtchi in the Armageddon game to book a 4th round date against Michael Adams.

However, the most important result of the day was Vladimir Kramnik, the 2013 World Cup Champion, getting knocked out of the World Cup. Interestingly, it was Andreikin, the runner up at the 2013 World Cup, who overcame Kramnik to storm into the ‘Round of 16’.

Meanwhile, Topalov, Wesley So, Adams, Vachier-Lagrave and Svidler turned out to be the remaining 5 qualifiers from the tie-breaks.

The 2nd game of the 3rd round of the FIDE World Cup 2015 saw eminent players like Grischuk, Ivanchuk and Leko getting knocked-out of the competition, albeit against strong 2700+ Grandmasters.

Jakovenko-Ivachuk
To everyone’s amazement, Ivanchuk self-destructed right out of the the opening and went on to lose in an almost one-sided battle.

Eljanov-Grischuk
With Grischuk requiring a win with the black pieces against someone of Eljanov’s strength to stay in contention, it was always going to be a challenging task. However, in an attempt to maintain complexity in the position, Grischuk was simply left worse. Eljanov took advantage of the same and went on to win a convincing game. It must be noted that Eljanov has been in tremendous form so far, winning all his matches with a 2-0 scoreline.

In other important results, Yu Yangyi and Leko were knocked out by Karjakin and Giri respectively.

Meanwhile, the Indian Challenge at the World Cup came to an end with Sethuraman failing to equalize the scores against Mamedyarov after the second game resulted in a dry draw.

A total of 7 matches go into the tie-breaks, with the most surprising of them being Lu Shanglei vs Topalov. The Chinese youngster is rated 2599 at the moment while Topalov is ranked 3rd in the world with a whooping 2816.

On a day when draws took precedence with 12 of the 16 games finishing in draws, there was no lack of action whatsoever. Although the draws in Nepomniachtchi-Nakamura and Andreikin-Kramnik turned out to be pretty dry ones, there were others where the excitement was at its peak.

Areshchenko-Wei Yi
This was the most exciting draw of the day. The two played a wild game, with Areshchenko sacrificing a piece for three pawns in the middlegame. However, Wei Yi defended pretty well and kept Areshchenko’s attack at bay. The game then entered an endgame, with Wei Yi still possessing a minor piece for three pawns, and was soon agreed draw.

Topalov-Lu Shanglei
This was another draw which hogged a lot of attention. The Chinese youngster seemed inadequately prepared in the Sicilian Dragon and Topalov, playing White, had no trouble claiming a sizeable advantage. However, the former World Champion went wrong at important junctures and a near-equal endgame resulted. After that, Lu Shanglei had no problems in holding on to a draw.

Talking of the decisive results, Mamedyarov, Caruana and Karjakin overcame Sethuraman, Kovalyov and Yu Yangyi respectively. Although these 3 games were convincingly won, the remaining decisive game stood out as it witnessed a whole lot of action.

Grischuk-Eljanov
The most eventful game of the day was definitely Grischuk-Eljanov. Here, Grischuk’s perrenial time-trouble led him to go from winning to drawing and then finally, losing. It’s worth noting that Grischuk hasn’t won even a single classical game in this tournament so far.

The Round 2 of the FIDE World Cup 2015 turned out to be an exciting affair with many intense match-ups and a few upsets. Particularly, it was the Adams-Laznicka encounter that hogged the limelight in the ‘Round of 64’.

Adams-Laznicka
After winning one game each in the Classical Match, the two players continued to exchange blows in the Tie-Breaks as well. In fact, their first draw came only in the 7th game of their personal match. With nothing to separate the two, the players entered into an Armageddon game with Adams having the White pieces. The Armageddon, however, turned out to be anti-climax of sorts with Laznicka going down without any resistance whatsoever, thus enabling Adams to book a spot in Round 3.

Meanwhile, two other matches – Wei Yi vs Yuri Vovk and Fressinet vs Nepomniachtchi – were decided just prior to the Armageddon. Wei Yi and Nepomniachtchi came out victorious in these hard-fought matches.

The Round 2 also witnessed the departure of several notable players including Aronian, Harikrishna, Wang Hao and Navara.

Aronian-Areshchenko
With former world No. 2 Levon Aronian proving unsuccessful in breaching the defences of Areshchenko in the Classical games, the match entered the tie-breaks. However, in total contrary to the odds, Areshchenko beat Aronian 2-0 in the rapid games to create the biggest upset of Round 2.

Harikrishna-Sethuraman
P. Harikrishna, World No. 21 and India’s best bet at the World Cup, was knocked out by compatriot S. P. Sethuraman in the Classical Section itself. After Harikrishna failed to make most of the White pieces in Game 1, Sethuraman successfully broke Harikrishna’s Berlin Wall in Game 2 to storm into the 3rd Round. Sethuraman will next face World No.22 Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who knocked out Women’s World No.1 Hou Yifan in Round 3.

Detailed Round 2 Results: Here