15 March 2016
Don't Part with Your Pawns
Eteri Kublashvili reviews the third round of the Candidates Tournament.
Before round 3 started, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov introduced Timur Azimov, the 7-year-old winner of the Moscow Championship Semifinals under 9, to the journalists who had gathered in the playing hall. Timur was charged with a responsible mission: he was to start the clock in the Anand vs. Caruana game. The young player accomplished his task with flying colors, and a new round started.
The players haven't been able to increase the number of resultative games so far, but the games aren't becoming less interesting. They are also very educative: the English-speaking commentator Evgenij Miroshnichenko analyses the key moments of the previous day's games online on a chessboard several times per day. Such interactive lessons will undoubtedly be of great use to the spectators.
Furthermore, the broadcasting often alternates with interviews of guests (Andrey Filatov, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, Arkady Dvorkovich, Boris Gelfand and others) and various curious clips about life at the Telegraph. Watching the tournament is becoming ever more interesting.
And now about the games. Levon Aronian became today's hero after defeating Veselin Topalov. As Hikaru Nakamura noted in an interview, the Bulgarian grandmaster is so far the only participant who is not in his best form, and this is difficult to disagree with. Despite his second loss, Veselin was cheerful and talkative after the game.
Topalov admitted that he had played the opening badly, having mixed up the variations, after which Black won a pawn and got a comfortable play. Then White made a couple of inaccurate moves again, and on move 17 Veselin blundered away a second pawn.
Topalov – Aronian
17. Rd1?
According to the Bulgarian grandmaster, he should have played 17. exd5 Nxd5 18. Bb2 Nb6 19. Qb5 here. Aronian agreed that such a continuation allowed White to get a compensation for the pawn.
17…Nxe4!
And if the bishop takes on e4, 18…Qf6 will follow. After that Levon converted his two extra pawns methodically and brought his first full point home.
Giri-Karjakin ended with a perpetual check. Anish noted that he had played the same opening continuation with White as Sergei versus Hikaru Nakamura the day before. As we remember, Karjakin won as White, and as Black he chose a plan that was different from Nakamura's and was able to avoid a bad position with an isolator. But Giri became active on the kingside, where he played a series of tactical blows with sacrifices.
Giri – Karjakin
24. Nxg6
Otherwise, as Anish noted, Black will move the knight to e4 and drive the queen out of g5.
24…fxg6 25. Qxg6+ Kh8 followed.
Here 26. e4 would be interesting, but this line was rejected in light of the abundance of protective resources for Black, whereas White's path towards a stronger position remained unclear.
Giri played 26. Nc5!? bxc5 27. dxc5 Rf8, and here White has no time for moving the rook to the fourth rank via d1 due to 27…Qe8, so Anish forced a draw by perpetual check: 28. Qh6+ Kg8 29. Qg6+ Kh8 30. Qh6+ Kg8.
The following theoretical duels require a detailed grandmaster's analysis, so I will confine myself to just describing them.
Vishy Anand and Fabiano Caruana opted for a confrontation in the Anti-Berlin, where White got a very promising position, but, as the world ex-champion acknowledged, he couldn't choose the best plan to obtain more. Caruana defended with Black very ingeniously and reached the draw haven.
The longest game of the day was played by Peter Svidler vs. Hikaru Nakamura. The opponents went for one of the most principled continuations of the Slav Defense, where at one point White's pawn stood on d7 and his queen on h7. But Peter proved to be very well prepared in the opening, neutralized all of the opponent's threats, carried out some successful exchanges and won a pawn. Nakamura had to defend a rook-and-knight endgame without a pawn that transferred smoothly to a rook endgame, and he succeeded in this task.
Monday March 14 is a day off for the players who will recharge their batteries and resume the fight on Tuesday. After the first three rounds, there are three leaders ― Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin and Viswanathan Anand ― scoring 2 points each.
The following games will be played in round 4: Svidler-Aronian, Caruana-Topalov, Karjakin-Anand, Nakamura-Giri.
