Wijk aan Zee 2015, Round 10 Recap: Draws At The Top (Updated, with Annotated Games)
Magnus Carlsen's winning streak came to an end today, though the result wasn't such a bad one: an easy draw with Black against Vassily Ivanchuk. That's an acceptable result for anyone - or at least any human being - and as his closest competitors (Wesley So and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave) didn't gain any ground, so much the better.
The Ivanchuk-Carlsen game was strange - "nonsense", as the latter noted afterwards (see the link in the previous post). Ivanchuk followed known theory and grabbed the draw. It might be understandable for most of us to do something like that against the world champion, but Ivanchuk is a great player in his own right, one who has beaten many world champions, including Carlsen himself.
Vachier-Lagrave was more ambitious, and had some advantage with White in an English against Radoslaw Wojtaszek. It seems that his pawn sac on move 14 wasn't completely sound though, and he had to work for the draw, which he eventually achieved.
So, on the other hand, had the black pieces, and while his preparation was outstanding (the entire game was part of his homework) it only netted him a quick draw by repetition against Ding Liren.
Before turning to the day's decisive results, let's wrap up the draws by mentioning the battle between Teimour Radjabov and Levon Aronian. Unlike the other draws, this went well past the first time control. Radjabov was better for a good chunk of the first time control, and Aronian had to defend well and patiently to hold the game, which was played all the way to king vs. king.
Turning to the decisive games, two were won by youngsters, who thereby pulled within half a point of So and Vachier-Lagrave. Anish Giri defeated Ivan Saric with Black, which "began" when he improved on his game against Radjabov from round six. The position was sharp but approximately level until Saric went gung ho starting with 26.g4; this quickly backfired against him, and after 30...Rxc3 31.Qxc3 Nxe4 32.Qd3 Nc3+ White was busted. Giri finished things up more expeditiously than he did against Ding yesterday, and with the win moved to +2 in the standings.
The other winning youngster was Fabiano Caruana, whose path to victory was less smooth. He too won with Black, against the unfortunate Baadur Jobava, and he stood much better most of the way. Near the end, however, Jobava's very resourceful play gave him a chance to save half a point. Had he played 51.Kf2 - and he plenty of time to do so - a draw might have been his after 51...Qd4+ 52.Ke2 Qxd8 53.Be6! Instead, he played 51.Kg3?? and had to resign a few moves later, faced with the choice of losing his queen or getting mated.
Finally - though he was the first of the winners to finish his game - Loek van Wely crushed Hou Yifan. Hou paid insufficient attention to her kingside, so van Wely and his pieces gave Black's king all the attention it could handle and then some, resulting in a miniature.
The tournament site is here, the games (without annotations for now; I'll get it to it in the morning) are here, and the pairings for round 11 - on Friday (Thursday is a rest day) - are as follows:
- Giri (6) - van Wely (3.5)
- So (6.5) - Saric (3)
- Wojtaszek (5) - Ding Liren (6)
- Carlsen (7.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (6.5)
- Aronian (4.5) - Ivanchuk (6)
- Caruana (6) - Radjabov (5)
- Hou Yifan (3) - Jobava (1.5)
In the Challengers' group the top two inverted their results from the previous round. This time it was Navara who drew his game while Wei Yi won (vs. l'Ami), and so they are again tied for first; both players have 8/10. Van Kampen won against Michiels to move into solo third place, while the day's other winner was Salem Saleh, who defeated Timman.
UPDATE: The games, with my notes, are here. It took a bit longer to get to than I had hoped, but they're up now.
Reader Comments (3)
Unless he has an excuse, such as illness, it's a singularly poor piece of behavior by Ivanchuk, depriving the chess world of what could have been an extremely interesting encounter. Not that Carlsen's winning streak was of such importance, but it was something for the spectators, and not allowing Carlsen to play chess was being a real party spoiler.
[DM: Chess is a sport first and an art secondarily, and thus Ivanchuk must worry about his score first and the desires of the (non-paying) chess world second. He's also not there to serve as a canvas for Carlsen to paint on. He gets paid by his score, and he gets the opportunity to play in such tournaments by getting his rating up. We can all admire Jobava's imprudent willingness to fall on his sword repeatedly, but now that he has lost 30 rating points and dropped below 2700, he's not going to get any new invitations to tournaments like this until he gains most or all of those points back. Which do you think he prefers, our applause or the (lost) tens of thousands of dollars in appearance fees and guaranteed prize money? Anyway, Ivanchuk is consistently among the most interesting players in chess and has been for more than two decades, so I'm not going to pick on him for a single chicken-y draw. Also, he may have been surprised by Carlsen's opening choice and didn't have anything special prepared for it. When that happens, it's often a prudent decision to head for safety. If he was making short, bloodless draws like this on a regular basis, I'd be with you and would suggest that organizers just stop inviting him. But on the whole he's as much a fighter as anyone else (remember the 2013 Candidates?), so c'mon, give him some slack. And it's not as if Carlsen had to accept the draw or choose the variation he did. Rest assured that he wouldn't give us a draw in such a position!]
It's a bit sad to see Jobava repeatedly ruining such great creative efforts (like the double exchange sac in the game vs. Caruana) with such relatively basic and/or silly mistakes (like 51.Kg3??; after 51.Kf2, the 53.Be6 idea wasn't easy to find, but in any case this king move was the only way to continue the game); reminded me of how he ruined his brilliant opening play vs. Saric with that weird 17.Ke3. A fellow chess fan once told me that among top GMs, Jobava is sometimes like the prettiest-but-also-dumbest girl in class.
It was actually the 2013 Candidates that kind of ruined Ivanchuk as a favorite player for me. Basically losing on time against everybody and only playing a decent game against those that had a chance to make it to the top ...