1 June 2016
How the Challenger Outfoxed the Champion
Round Five of the Shamkir supertournament in the review of Eteri Kublashvili.
On the eve of the day off new performance records were set by the participants of the Vugar Gashimov Memorial. Nevertheless, the situation with the "ruling class" at the Shamkir super tournament has undergone no changes: in round five the race leader Fabiano Caruana won his fourth game in a row by outplaying Teimour Radjabov. The opponents opened the game into the Rossolimo system of the Sicilian defense with opposite castling.
Caruana told that his counterpart probably played imprecisely and landed into an unpleasant position as a result, but it remained unclear as to the exact moment at which Teimour's position turned into a lost one. Already after 14...a4 Black's position is awful. Perhaps Radjabov should have answered 13. Bh6 by trading bishops rather than retreating his piece to h8.
Caruana - Radjabov
The desperate 16…a3 was met by the cold-blooded rejoinder 17. b4, upon which White got a lasting advantage, which Caruana brought home with an iron fist.
17…Nd7 18. Nxd7 Bxd7 19. e5 f5 20. Ne2 Bg7 21. Bxg7 Kxg7 22. h4 fxg4
23. h5 gxh5 24. Ng3 Kh8 25. Nxh5… Black recognized his defeat some dozen of moves later.
Hou Yifan once again decided to resort to the open Ruy Lopez as Black against Sergey Karjakin. Up to a certain point the game went along the lines of Sergey's encounter against Magnus Carlsen (Wijk aan Zee, 2007), but at one point Yifan sidestepped from the beaten track and a few moves later failed to find an equalizing continuation, upon which her position became somewhat inferior. Despite the opposite-colored bishop ending, Karjakin managed to win a pawn and to achieve a decisive advantage. The Russian was accurate in the technical stage of the game, and the World Champion acknowledged her defeat on move 53.
Eltaj Safarli and Anish Giri, were testing the Sicilian system with development of the light-squared bishop to b5, just as were Caruana and Radjabov, but, unlike the game of their tournament hall neighbors, Black got a full-fledged game and managed to pose questions that White failed to find answers to. Nevertheless, Eltaj believes that he still managed to take his opponent by surprise in the opening and it was only afterwards that he went wrong.
Safarli - Giri
29. Nc7?!
According to Anish, a lot more stubborn was 29. f4, followed by something like 29…Ng6 30. g3 h5 31. Nf1 Rxd1 32. Bxd1 h4.
In the game there followed, however, 29…Bh5 30. Ne6 Rde8 31. Nc7 Re7 32. Nd5 Nxd5 33. cxd5 exf3 34. d6 Reg7, and Black got a decisive advantage and won the game.
The game between Pentala Harikrishna and Pavel Eljanov happened to be very dynamic. In the Four Knights Game the Indian grandmaster launched play on the kingside and sacrificed a piece, but it was still the opponent's mistake that fetched victory to White.
Harikrishna – Eljanov
26…exd4?!
As was mentioned during the press conference, stronger was 26…Nd6 or 26…Qb6 with a draw as a likely outcome.
However, in the game after 27. Bxh6 Qxf1+ 28. Kxf1 Nfxg6+ 29. Kg1 Rab8 30. Rxh6+ Nxh6 31. Qxh6+ the queen annihilated three pawns and ended up triumphant over a pair of rooks.
"The home players" Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Rauf Mamedov opened the game into a theoretical line of the Anti-Meran, in which the position, in general, never went beyond the limits of equality. The game ended in a draw by repetition on move 31.
After five rounds Fabiano Caruana is in the lead with 4.5 points. Lurking respectively half a point and a point and a half behind are Anish Giri and Sergey Karjakin.
Tuesday, May 31, is a scheduled day off at the tournament.
Pairings of round six are as follows:
Anish Giri - Pavel Eljanov, Hou Yifan - Pentala Harikrishna, Rauf Mamedov - Sergey Karjakin, Teimour Radjabov - Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and Eltaj Safarli - Fabiano Caruana.
