Translated material
September checkered
The first month of autumn is rich in top-rank tournaments
At the Women's World Championship in Nalchik, the participants in the decisive match were determined. The semifinal matches between Alexandra Kosteniuk (Russia) and Pia Cramling (Sweden) and Hou Yifan (China) and Humpi Koneru (India) followed approximately the same scenario.In the first games with classical time control, Alexandra Kosteniuk and Hou Yifan managed to realize White's advantage in a good positional style. This predetermined their tactics for fighting as black: they played, as they say, “with a draw in their pocket,” but time trouble disrupted the natural course of events. But if Kosteniuk used Cramling’s blunder for perpetual check (ignoring the opportunity to win the queen) and won the match with a score of 1.5:0.5, then Koneru, naturally, did not forgive Hou Yifan for her blunder and, having carried out a checkmate attack on the king, equalized score (1:1). In the tiebreaker, Hou Yifan's nerves were stronger, she forced Koneru to come back in a quick game, and then won both blitz games and won the match with a score of 4:2. The participation of a 14-year-old girl in the world championship match looks like a sensation in women's chess. But the sensation is predictable, if you remember her performance at the World Team Championship in 2005, when 11-year-old Hou Yifan beat Sergei Rublevsky.
The Russian champion started the final match with a confident victory. After Hou Yifan, who played white, switched to the reserve rails in the Spanish game and unreasonably weakened the king's side, Kosteniuk decided the outcome of the game with a powerful attack on the king. An encouraging start, but knowing the potential of the young Chinese woman, there is no need to relax. After all, there are still three games ahead with classical control (if the score is 2:2, a tie-break is played).
The final tournament of the Grand Slam series ended in the Spanish city of Bilbao, in which the grandmasters who showed the best results in three competitions of the year with the prefix “super” - Wijk aan Zee, Morelia-Linares and Sofia received the right to play. The two-round tournament of the 22nd category was played by Viswanathan Anand (? 1 in the FIDE rating list as of July 1), Vasily Ivanchuk (4), Veselin Topalov (5), Magnus Carlsen (6), Teymur Radjabov (7), Levon Aronian ( 12). Unfortunately, Vladimir Kramnik and Alexander Morozevich, who had the second and third ratings, were outside the Grand Slam in terms of their performance. Features of the Bilbao tournament included a football scoring system (three points for a win, one point for a draw) and a return to thinking time controls without adding extra seconds after each move.
The last “innovation” added drama to the game under time pressure, which was already experienced by Ivanchuk in the first round, who experienced two terrible time troubles in his game with Anand. Moreover, in the first of them, Vasily had only a second left for the last ten moves. Is it fair to evaluate a fight of such intensity with just one “football” point?
What are your impressions of the tournament? First of all, the extremely inexpressive play of Anand, who failed to win a single game with two defeats and took last place. It is clear that Anand experienced the same problems at the tournament as his future match opponent Kramnik, who also “darkened” his potential at the Tal Memorial, but the world champion is obliged to maintain his image. In any case, the history of chess does not know such an unsuccessful performance by a world champion preparing to defend his title. A bright contrast against the background of Anand's lackluster play was the creative impulse of Topalov, who not only broke him in the first round, but also beat his main competitor, Carlsen, twice. Moreover, the second time this happened two days before the end of the tournament, when Magnus dared to take the risky dragon variation with Black, and although he veered off the beaten path, Topalov figured out the intricacies of the position.
It remains to add that in the last round Topalov confidently beat Ivanchuk, who was unable to contain his passed pawn, despite the presence of opposite-colored bishops - harbingers of a draw in the endgame. The results of the tournament are as follows: Topalov - 17 points, Carlsen, Aronian - 13 each, Ivanchuk - 12, Radjabov - 10, Anand - 8. And if counted using the traditional system, the position of the participants would look like this: Topalov - 6.5, Aronian, Carlsen, Ivanchuk - 5 each, Radjabov - 4.5, Anand - 4.
On the eve of the main competitions of the year - the matches Anand - Kramnik and Kamsky - Topalov, held as part of the current cycle of the World Championship, the tournament in Bilbao seemed to sum up the real balance of power on the chess Olympus. The intrigue was who would be able to beat Anand during the competition. It seemed that the closest to the goal was the rapidly progressing Carlsen, who, on the threshold of his 18th birthday, is now being sung by everyone, comparing him with the unforgettable Robert Fischer, but only Topalov succeeded. Today, the assessment of the current ranking of the top ten of the chess world, calculated by the leading expert in this field Eduard Dubov, is as follows: Topalov - 2794 points, Anand - 2786, Morozevich - 2780, Ivanchuk - 2778, Carlsen - 2773, Kramnik -- 2772, Aronian -- 2754, Radjabov -- 2748, Leko -- 7442, Wang Yu -- 2735. The density of rating indicators for the grandmasters in the top six (the rest are noticeably inferior) indicates approximately the same strength of play. The chess world now has no clear leader after Garry Kasparov left the stage.
A major league tournament of the Russian men's championship took place in Novokuznetsk, where 56 participants played for five tickets to the super final (prize fund 2.5 million rubles) over 11 rounds using the Swiss system. The qualifying nature of the tournament predetermined the appropriate tactics of fighting. As the experience of the previous national championship showed, applicants for the coveted spots could count on success if they achieved a result of “plus three”, however, with an eye on additional indicators in the likely division of places. As a result, by the last round, only the leader of the competition, Artem Timofeev, and Nikita Vitiugov and Ernesto Inarkiev, who were half a point behind him, were not worried, for whom a draw guaranteed success. The final results of the main candidates for tickets to the super final are as follows: Timofeev - 8 points, Vitiugov, Inarkiev - 7.5, Maslak, Lastin, Ryazantsev, Sakaev, Kobalia, Galkin, Grachev, Naer - 7 each. In addition to the first three winners, additional According to the indicators, Konstantin Maslak and Alexander Lastin received the right to participate in the super final.