Report of round 9 - Report of round 9

A first win for Michael Adams, after eight straight draws. In a Sozin Najdorf against Loek van Wely, the Brit got a comfortable position, and was nursing a small edge when his idea of 22.Ne2 and 23.c3 was answered by the strong 23...Nf6!, with the idea of 24.Rxd6? Bxe4!, and so black was fine now. The crisis occurred after Michael played 31.c4, and Loek correctly took it, but then played the mistake 32...Nh5? (see diagram 4), allowing the strong trick of 33.Qc3! winning the a-pawn. All Adams had to do now was to exchange pieces, and convert his material advantage - a task he fulfilled with superb technique.

Levon Aronian chose a very quiet line in the English, and his opponent Pavel Eljanov easily equalised. After 16.c5 white traded his light squared bishops, and with more trades about to take place, the players called it a day. In the final position white has everything in order tactically, either after 20...Bxe3 21.Nxd5! or 20...Qxe5 21.Bxc5 Nxc5 22.Nxd5.

Vassily Ivanchuk has good reason to feel disappointed today. In a Gruenfeld against Shakhryar Mamedyarov, he was somewhat better, when his opponent uncorked 24...Nb5? (24...Nc6! was close to fine for black), and now the ensuing tactics highly favored white; for example had black played 27...Nxa1?, 28.Nf6+ would have been winning at once. Chuky increased his advantage and was winning, but running short of time let his promising position drift. 27.Qh4! instead of 27.Bd6?, was the most critical moment, but also 31.Bxa6 instead of 31.h3?! would have been much better. In the end the Azeri managed to consolidate, and when he reciprocated with his own exchange sacrifice to counter his opponent’s one, a draw was registered.

In the Judit Polgar - Teimur Radjabov matchup the players were following known theory of the seldom seen Janisch gambit of the Ruy Lopez. When the Hungarian went for 18.Bxe4, the game came to a sudden end, when after a few forced moves white had to give a perpetual check.

The big buzz today clearly was the high-tension duel between Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik. The two did not shake hands before the game, as neither one offered his first, but they would have obliged if one would have been offered. The game itself was an impressive showing of the Topalov kitchen - the novelty of 12.Nxf7 (see diagram 1) was found by Toppy’s second, Ivan Cheparinov, and was well kept like fine wine for three years, for just such an occasion. When asked after the game, Ivan said that some specific lines were analyzed all the way to move 40(!). Topalov also credited his manager Danailov in predicting that this variation of the semi Slav would appear today - a prediction that was not shared by Veselin himself. Of course the sacrifice leads to a highly complicated position, with many possibilities, and its true test lies in the line that starts with 17...Rhg8!?, instead of 17...Qxd4? (see diagram 2), which was played, and criticized by the Bulgarian. “It looks as if white is just playing a piece down, but in fact his attack is quite dangerous” said Topalov. After some forced moves, white played the very accurate 21.a4!, forcefully undermining the position of the black king. Topalov was surprised by Vlady’s 23...b3?!, and felt that “white should be winning”. but in any case black’s life isn’t a picnic after either 23..Nxc3 24.h3 and 25.Qe7, or 23...bxc3 24.Rb1 c2 25.Rb7. On move 27, Topalov decided it was “time to sacrifice the queen”, although other moves may have been enough also. Black’s position was quite hopeless now, for example had he tried 29...Rc8 then 30.dxe6! was crushing through. It seemed like smooth sailing for Veselin, until in Kramnik’s time trouble he played 34.e7?, (34.Rxb3 was simple and good), blundering his strong pawn. That only delayed the end, as white was still winning easily, and after black’s final mistake 37...h5? collected the full point.

Boris Gelfand and Vishy Anand repeated their game from the Mexico world championship tournament, with the Israeli trying to improve with 11.Re1. The world champion did not have any special problems, and his 20...Ne3! already forced white to hold the balance. After the game, Boris was pleased with his accurate defensive manoeuver of 24.Be4 and 25.Ng2 that equalised and so a draw was agreed upon on the very next move.

The turnaround at the top continued with Peter Leko’s win over leader Magnus Carlsen in a Breyer Ruy Lopez. It was a “crazy game”, said Peter in the post mortem, and noted that he had played much better games in this tournament than this one, that he did not win. Magnus played quite ambitiously with 18...d5, but later erred with 20...Bxb4?. The Hungarian was annoyed with himself for not winning a pawn in the line 21.Nxf6+ Qxf6 22.Bxb4 axb4 23.dxe5 Nxe5 24.Nxe5 Rxe5 25.Qxc7. What happened instead was a wild sequence, which ended with white having a rook and a very strong a-pawn to black’s two knights. The tension was kept for a long while, until a move before making time control, the Norwegian blundered horribly with 39...Qf3?? (see diagram 3) (39...Qd4!), dropped a knight, and had to resign.