Report of round 1 - CCT 2005

The Return Of The Judit!

The highest rated woman took no time to signal that she intends to pick up exactly where she left off. Fearlessly, Judit accepted the challenge to play against the Marshall gambit against Peter Svidler – no sidestepping there. They followed known paths of theory until Peter’s 17…Re8N replacing the previous 17…g5. White had a slight pull which she nursed into a full point. The final position was quite aesthetic with Judit was warmly rewarded for her win with the 250 Euro public prize.

Much less eventful was the Grischuk-Anand encounter; Evidently, the young Russian had a headache and initiated a variation in the open Ruy Lopez that Vishy knows inside and out and that yielded him nothing. When the point was split on move 22 still in book, the Indian GM had only used 6 minutes of his time.

The British derby between Nigel Short and Michael Adams also ended peacefully, when Mickey managed to equalize on the black side of a Chigorin Ruy Lopez. “We chickened out” Short said half jokingly when asked why they repeated moves, but as neither side could deviate without taking a risk, the decision seems reasonable: If 20…Bb6?! 21.a3 Na6 22.b4! is good for white while 21…Bb6 22.Bg5 wasn’t to black’s liking. Nigel said he could have tried 22.Bd1 but after 22…Rc4 23.a3 Na6 24. b3 Nxe4 25.Nxe4 Rxe4 26.Bc2 Rxe3 he felt the position was just too unclear.

Classical chess’ vice champion Peter Leko was quite pleased at his navigations through the intricacies of the Semi Slav in his game with Ivan Sokolov, especially, 10…b4 which seems new and solves all of Black’s problems since 11.Ne4 Nxe4 12.Bxe4 Bb7 is fine. Both players agreed that 15.a3? was a poor choice after which white must go into defensive mode, and 15.b3 would have been balanced. The leading Dutch player made up for it by defending mightily and just holding on to make a draw at the end.

What does a player think when he has to face an opponent he lost to in their last 8(!) meetings? When Loek van Wely sat down opposite Alexander Morozevich today he simply decided to ‘take him seriously’. The Russian's unorthodox tactical style frustrated the Dutchman who kept feeling it should be punished and kept being punished himself. Today he played aggressively and tried to utilize a strong bishop pair but couldn’t cash in. It would have been exciting to see how he would have reacted had white gone for 23.f4, a move the computers were strongly suggesting (23…exf4 24.Rd7)

The drawing of the lots didn’t make Corus debutant Lazaro Bruzon’s life any easier with a first round pairing against the world champ Vladimir Kramnik, and indeed at first it looked as if white was being pressed from the white side of an innocuous Queen’s Indian variation. Black was moving some heavy forces on the kingside and even sacrificed a pawn but then after the Queens came off white was getting good counter play and a draw was agreed.

Ruslan Ponomariov lured Veselin Topalov to following a variation in a game the latter crushed Lutz in 2002, probably having an improvement prepared. Topalov thought otherwise, deviating himself from the plan in the aforementioned game and seemed to improve on it. Black tried to sacrifice a pawn for some initiative, but the Bulgarian looked in complete control. With two Knights versus 2 Bishops he had a bind on the position. Black eventually got his pawn back, but the ensuing endgame was much better for white and after some more resistance the Ukrainian had to concede defeat.