11 August 2015
Let Them Come Closer
Round Two of the Superfinal in the review of Vladimir Barsky.
The daily working routine of the Superfinal has begun on Monday. The honored guests have left for their work places, while the local journalists were no longer circling and swarming around the press center hall in the anticipation of another meeting with the governor. The excessive over-excitement has waned. However, chess fans have already trodden a path to the Palace of Youth "Megapolis-Sport", and every day is likely to see more and more of them. Opposite to the main entrance of the hall, a huge screen for the audience has been mounted, showing the online stream with commentary of grandmaster Sergei Shipov (on the second day he was toiling alone, as his colleague Mark Glukhovsky went over to visit the Daursky Nature Reserve for a rendezvous with a Felis Manul cat). Right next to the screen is the exhibition "Chess in War" and a traveling exhibition from the collection of the Moscow Chess Museum. Meanwhile, if you go along a little further into a large gym and fix yourself on the stand, you can see Shipov himself live, but this is only good for people with good eyesight since the screen is much smaller, whereas the distance up to is longer. All in all, everyone may choose to his or her liking. From time to time the members of the audience would rise to the second floor to cast a direct look with their own eyes at the main heroes of the occasion – men and women players of the Superfinal.
Recalling the opening ceremony, the first round in the men's section may be termed as a trial shooting, while the second day saw nothing short of destructive firing. An accurate shot in the opening was made by Nikita Vitiugov, who first lulled Ivan Bukavshin by his modest play and allowed him to come closer, upon which he left his younger opponent with no chances of surviving out of troubles.
Vitiugov - Bukavshin
1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c6 4.e3 Nf6 5.b3 Bd6 6.Bb2 0–0 7.Bd3 e5 8.dxe5 Bxe5
At the press conference Nikita admitted that this rather untrodden position was analyzed by him at home.
9.Nf3 Bg4
Now the grandmaster from St. Petersburg intended to play 10.Qd2 according to his home preparation, but then rejected this idea on the grounds of 10...Bxf3 11.gxf3 d4 12.Na4, when the 12…dxe3 capture comes with a tempo. The engine, however, comes up with an interesting follow-up line 13.Bxh7+!? Nxh7 14.Qxd8 Rxd8 15.Bxe5, but after 15…Ng5 Black should face no special problems.
Anyway, Vitiugov went on committing his queen to an adjacent square.
10.Qc2 Bxf3 11.gxf3 d4
Ivan is very likely to have missed the canny 13th move of his opponent, otherwise he would have opted for a calmer continuation 11...Na6 12.a3 Nc5 with an excellent play.
12.Ne2 Qa5+
Stepping straight into the trap. Better was 12...c5, although here after 13.f4 White maintains an unpleasant type of initiative.
13.b4!
It is essential that the e5-bishop be left undefended. Now Black is not in time to exchange on e3 and is losing his far advanced pawn.
13…Qxb4+ 14.Kf1 c5 15.f4 Bd6 16.exd4
White managed to gain an overwhelming advantage and went on to bring it home shortly after.
The chief coach of the Russian Men’s Team, the European-2014 Champion Alexander Motylev, used all his imagination and energy in his game against Ildar Khairullin, but committed an unexpected blunder on move 25.
Motylev – Khairullin
Black lags behind in development, while his king is desperately seeking any kind of a reliable shelter and preventing his rooks from maintaining the proper level of coordination. A simple move 25.Bd3 would have allowed White to build up pressure in a slow manner, while retaining the material balance on the board. However, there followed the unbelievable 25.Na2??
Alexander, who attended the after the game press conference together with Ildar, admitted that he counted only upon 25...Nxa2 (which is met by 26.Qxa6+ Kd7 27.Rxd5+ Ke7 28.Rf5 and White is as close to the black king as the arm’s length). Khairullin, however, replied with 25...Nxc2, leaving White down a piece in the case of 26.Qxc2 Rxb2.
Motylev plunged into a desperate attack, no longer minding the losses of his material:
26.Qxa6+ Kd7 27.Nc3 Nxe1 28.Nxd5 Qe5!
Khairullin calculated all the lines thoroughly and found out that the discovered check only looks menacing, but in fact White achieves nothing.
29.c6+ Ke8 30.Qa7 Rd8 31.Nxc7+ Qxc7 32.Qxc7 Rxd1 33.Qb8+ Ke7 34.Qb4+ Kf6 35.Qc3+ Kg6 36.Kf1 Re8 White resigns.
The game Khismatullin-Tomashevsky turned out to be a real pearl of the round. One of the offshoots of the English Opening, into which their game developed and which witnessed fierce fighting between Karpov and Kasparov in Seville as far back as 1987 (this year being, incidentally, the year of Evgeny Tomashevsky’s birth), has been recently regaining its former popularity. The grandmaster from Saratov has come up with a new profound idea, although he himself modestly labeled it as a "semi-bluff". Denis was tempted into a provocative exchange sacrifice as it seemed to land White into a very promising position. It turned out, however, that Evgeny was still following his home preparation lines and this seemingly "playable position", in fact, goes for two results only as White is struggling for a draw. As a result, Tomashevsky scored a convincing victory, but Khismatullin had nothing to reproach himself about as he played in the most principled way and did not start shying away from the big fight as White.
All those who did not benefit from following it in real time, please make sure that you follow up on this press conference (or, rather, a true lecture) given by Tomashevsky later as it is well worth the effort! By the way, prior to its start there emerged a minor technical glitch since the screen displaying the moves for the audience seated in the hall went out. Out of respect for the chess fans Evgeny would not start narrating the story of his own game as long as the technicians were busy fixing the problem. While filling in the pause, together with Sergey Shipov he shared his thoughts about the course of the games that were still in progress at the moment.
The girls’ tournament saw four games that ended in wins. Among these games the most intense and exciting was the encounter between Marina Guseva and Olga Girya. The winner of the Higher League 2015 is famous for her aggressive style, but Olga did not fear to allow the destruction of the pawn shelter, which used to be inhabited by her king.
Guseva – Girya
26.Qg3+ Kf8 27.Qf4 Ke7!
Turning down the repetition of moves without a shadow of any doubt. A picture of a knight on e5 protects Black from any adversities, while the h5-bishop is squinting at him, being full of envy.
28.Qxh6 Qd4+ 29.Kh1 Rd6 30.b3 Qxe4 31.Qc1 Qd4 32.h3 a5
The computer’s evaluation of “approximately equal” is misleading as White finds it very difficult to keep this position together. Eventually Olga succeeded in breaking through the defensive formations of her opponent.
In the women's section of the tournament two out of two points have been scored by Olga Girya and Aleksandra Goryachkina, while in the men’s section there are as many as four leaders: Nikita Vitiugov, Sergey Karjakin, Evgeny Tomashevsky and Ildar Khairullin, all of them having scored one and a half point each.
